Who is the number one black female blogger in the world? That's easy. LaShawn Barber. Why? Because she's untiring in her efforts to get her name out there, she has a compelling blog, and dammit people like her. I'm picking up on her meme today because it's a real enough one to discuss at length, but also because I think it's time (again) that black blogs get their due.
Just the other day, I ran into some character who thought he was the first black blogger from Detroit. As far as I know, the most popular black blogger from Detroit has been around for at least two years, and got a lot of coverage for an interesting incident that I won't go into. My point is that black blogs have long been around, the question is who is paying attention, and why or why not.
We are already learning something deep about the dynamism (or lack thereof as it were) of marketshare in the blogosphere. Because of the ways and means of linking, there are blogs that are 'popular' even though nobody is writing on them. For a long time I complained about Rachel Lucas being a higher order lifeform in the TTLB Ecosystem than I was, even though she stopped blogging for over a year.
In the blogosphere there is a real contingency of patronage. I'm not sure that everyone is so eager to say so, but it's real. As real as is the term 'blogosphere' is the term 'blogfather'. Ask any blogger of substance, and if they're honest (and are abetted by a technical clue or two) they'll know which other blogs send them the most traffic. They will also almost surely know who gave them their big break and under which circumstances that occured. There is not a conspiracy of white male bloggers, and I'd guess all of them would be loathe to admit any such clubbiness, but all popular bloggers belong to a club and none of them are about to delink anytime soon.
Dead White Male Blogs - The Elvis Factor
One way to look at the question of whether or not there is a conspiracy to keep all the goods is what [white male] bloggers do to police themselves. I think they don't. I know for a fact that there's a lot of dead linkage out there that nobody really trims, and that this ossifies marketshare. Once popular, always popular. It seems to be a one way function from which few people fall. DenBeste at USS Clueless has over 800 links and he hasn't blogged regularly for many months. In fact, I've been checking his latest post as I write this one and note that he has gotten the equivalent of one week's Cobb traffic in about 90 minutes. Here are several other dead blogs that still suck up oxygen. (I'm giving Andrew Sullivan a pass)
Lefty Destroyer Jeff Aaron's Rantblog Calpundit
I could go on but it's boring and time-consuming work to slueth through the Ecosystem to see which blogs actually exist. This only strengthens my point.
Juan Cole & Meritocracy
I'm one of the people that happens to think that Juan Cole is a brilliant idiot on the level of William Shockley. He is one of those people of which I think the poet referred to as knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing. In particular, I am speaking of his determined effort to sabotage the moral reasoning for the Iraq War with his incessant and well informed sniping. For this, Cole has generated a number of rivals and enemies in the blogosphere. There are others, Kaus, Kos, Atrios. I think that if the blogosphere were to be considered a meritocracy, Juan Cole would still be near the top. The reason for this is that Cole has reached the tipping point at which he is no longer dependent on the politics of blogrolling. Which is to say that he gets plenty of traffic without mutual linking, without supporting comments and without trackbacks. He's out there, unassisted, influential.
The rest of us poor slobs, and I would consider myself a poor slob on the order of Unfogged, although I have been compared to Lileks, need mutual blogrolling, league membership, comment traffic and other methods of enlightened self-interest to maintain or improve our status as noteworthy and readable. These practices, affectionately known as 'link whoring' are a stock in trade among the B-List and Blog Rabble which I would consider to be anyone less evolved than a Primate in the TTLB Ecosystem.
The Gratuitous, Qualified Pitch
At Cobb, I have consistently refused advertising. I think ads would make my site look hideous, they add nothing of value, and I couldn't possibly get paid enough with my current volume to justify them. I also haven't advertised. I simply can't afford it right now, plus I can't think of a cool enough slogan at the moment. I am also already a Large Mammal and living large is enough for me, sorta.
On the other hand, I do think that we're in a state of disgrace when it comes to the national recognition of black bloggers. As pitiable a situation as that is, I don't know that there is a list or that I'd want to be on it, considered separately. In other words, I know that when it comes to pure bloggy merit, there are a lot of African Americans that are deserving of a lot more traffic and recognition than they get, and I think Cobb ought to do a lot better than it does in terms of traffic. But, I'm not sure there's a simple solution.
I've decided to do something about that with regard to advertisement, but what I haven't really considered until now is the power of Affirmative Action, or more properly speaking: Tokenism.
I hereby submit Cobb for the consideration of all A-List Bloggers as the Head Negro in Blogs. Send me your poor, huddled vanillified readers yearning to breathe diversity. I lift my banner beside the olive greed sidebar! But since I also link to more black blogs than the average bear, I know the trickle down will continue.
I do so with the confidence of years of blogging and writing online that have thus far so nobly advanced me. And I also do it as a publicity stunt, and further and most importantly I do it because I understand that the dynamics of patronage in the blogosphere is the most important factor in launching a blog's popularity. If anyone anywhere today is saying that blogging is a white male domain, then they clearly do not know about how huge the blogosphere is and how many women and non-whites are active and popular. But there is the big unanswered question about whom the A-List Bloggers consider to be representative of those outside the top of their blogrolls. I've been a hot blog launched by DenBeste and by The Agonist (my blogfathers) when they were at their peaks, and I certain am appreciative of that, but I have never before sought nomination. The very persistence of the question of black blogs amidst 'white male hegemony' demands that the real black bloggers please stand up, and it's about time. But you and I both know that the A-List Bloggers or the MSM have to say it's an issue before the average blog reader, or average American takes notice and says 'hmm, I wonder...'.
Bottom line, merit in the blogosphere is what the top bloggers say merit is, and they allocate it out by referring to blogs with which they are engaged in conversation. I don't think that's going to change much. Blogs move not only on their own power but on their ability to get big bloggers to compete, cooperate or otherwise notice and comment on them.
And the People Say..
On the other hand, the phenominal rise of LaShawn Barber over the past year puts a distinct question to me, which is that while she has gotten very popular, most of us, her mates in the Conservative Brotherhood have remained pretty much where we were. Although I can speak only speak for myself, the big rush has not come, and trickle down just might not be real. So why second guess the market? Perhaps it's altogether true that people are indeed finding exactly what they want in the blogosphere from blacks, whites, women and everybody else who identifies some orientation to their writing. There isn't going to be a technical revolution in blog traffic monitoring, and the 'sphere is mature. All change from here on out is going to have to be phenomenon-based.
But that does not dissuade me from believing that Cobb and other purposefully black [political] blogs could use some publicity. We have something to say and we're worth reading. But until somebody with marketshare says so, we remain as we are. Obscure, poor and somewhat reconciled the the fact that our say so only reaches a paucity of eyeballs. And so we keep stepping.
Disclosure: According to the TTLB Ecosystem, Cobb ranks 1510th in average daily traffic with 137 readers per day. Cobb ranks 721st overall with 184 links.
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