The myth of meritocracy, blogosphere edition

Yesterday I wrote about a few issues of mobility and meritocracy, specifically regarding education. The general ideas are similar in a wide variety of areas, though, and one of those areas that doesn't get mentioned much by highly-trafficked blogs is ... the blogosphere. There's sometimes a sense that the internet is this magic zone of meritocracy wherein all other factors are wiped away by electrons, but that's not quite right. There is, of course, a lot about blogging that levels the playing field; if a writer chooses, he or she can be anonymous -- no labels, no boxes -- and anybody can set up a site, so the barriers to entry are relatively minimal. But to be successful, to have your voice heard, is another story.

The most obvious advantage is simply timing -- most of the high-traffic sites have been around for a long time. I don't think readership is inelastic or zero sum, but it's clearly much harder to build an audience now than it might have been even a few years ago. Further, all of the most popular liberal blogs have writers who are, for various reasons, able to spend a lot of time doing this. Obviously having the resources to make it possible to spend eight, ten, twelve hours a day writing about current events isn't something that applies to everybody. Some full-time bloggers are funded by organizations or are hosted by a think tank or progressive groups, and others started out in a position of financial stability allowing for that kind of time commitment. And that's good and important -- we need people to be part of this broad community, and this is in no way a criticism; it's also worth noting that virtually every "high profile" liberal blogger could be making wayyyy more money doing something else, so it's not like this is a lucrative lifestyle or anything like that. But these elements matter.

Another big factor, as with everything in life, is personal relationships. Some of that is related to finances too (have enough money to go to conferences? to travel to meetings and events?) and some is just random connections, but it matters what email lists you're on, who you can get to link to your stuff, and who has you on their RSS feed. Some of that is about the writing, and some of it isn't.

More broadly, there's how the blogosphere works at a macro level. The most popular sites are general political blogs, and most react to the news or try to drive particular narratives; for all of the ostensible animosity between blogs and the mainstream media, the two really feed off each other and, to a large degree, bolster each other. And again, that's often a good thing -- there's no rule that blogs have to change the structure, and certainly there's no consensus on what good structural changes would even look like. There is, though, a lot of reinforcement of, say, the horse-race aspect of political coverage, and despite some challenges to the status quo, I think blogs end up reflecting pretty closely existing states of affairs. The debate over the diversity of people -- and the defense that popular writers are a diverse bunch is indeed true; Markos is latino, Jane is a woman, John is gay, and on and on -- is in many ways a distraction from this fact, not a recognition of it, and minority voices are often understandably annoyed by being marginalized by the narrative that the blogs are the domain of white dudes. That debate, though, can sometimes mask the fact that other kinds of diversity haven't shined through in high profile ways. 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.

The market is a major factor, obviously -- niche subjects produce niche audiences, and vice versa. Some topics or sites or writers don't have huge readership because the writing is infrequent, or narrow, or just bad. But there's also plenty about blogs that's dismissive of the same voices that get dismissed offline, and that reinforces status quo, and, to bring it back to yesterday's post, reflects something other than pure meritocracy. As with so many other areas, there's a huge motivation to rationalize and validate success as completely a product of hard work and determination. And much of it is . . . but much of it isn't. Even those who become successful through hard work, determination, and talent almost certainly had some built-in advantages -- including me, of course -- and I don't think it diminishes anybody's accomplishments or efforts to acknowledge that.

As with yesterday's discussion, it's a lot easier to identify this stuff than to know what the end result is (or should be). And nothing is more annoying than telling people how to write or think, so this isn't an exhortation or anything. But like I said, it doesn't get discussed much, and it warrants mentioning.