A.J. Rossmiller writes on the "myth of meritocracy" in the blogosphere and accurately describes the lay of the land, in my view. But his analysis of the blogging elite is a bit incomplete. In the beginning he notes that "all of the most popular liberal blogs have writers who are, for various reasons, able to spend a lot of time doing this." while "Some full-time bloggers are funded by organizations or are hosted by a think tank or progressive groups" and "virtually every "high profile" liberal blogger could be making wayyyy more money doing something else."
This is all true, but two paragraphs later he notes that "The blogger "elite" remains largely a crew of people who still fit a certain demographic: highly educated, financially secure, coastal, connected. There are always exceptions, of course, but generally speaking. And it's *especially* true of the younger generation of full-time bloggers." I'm going to assume he's still talking about the liberal blogging elite here, because if not he has left out the hordes of conservative bloggers, many of whom don't match this profile at all but are nonetheless quite popular in their own right.
But the issue here is what an "elite" is. Outside of the internet, an elite is considered, simply, the best. The creme de la creme. But in the blogosphere an elite is simply the most popular. Highly trafficked, read, linked to, etc. The reasons for this are a separate question, and one that Rossmiller addresses well. But the reason merit has been decoupled from popularity is because the meaning of what it means to be an elite has itself been warped. Are the blogging elite, right or left, "the best?" Obviously we need some sort of metric to address this question, considering that most bloggers are general political commentators who lack expertise or special training in a given area. And those bloggers who are experts -- whether in law, foreign policy, the Middle East, etc. -- do, by dint of being virtually unrivaled in the world of online communication, deserve to by evaluated by merit. They might not be the best in their field, but they likely represent the best in that field as represented in the blogosphere.
--Mori Dinauer
