All such attempts at rankings must be rough around the edges. White's three categories are (1) dollar value (a concept I'm not too clear on); (2) global ranking; and (3) local ranking. In each category, he makes a further division between liberal blogs and conservative blogs.
White explains:
I believe the dollar ranking to be the best overall measure as to the reach of a blog. I also believe the dollar values should be taken with a grain of salt as to the actual monetary value, but if taken as “points” as opposed to dollars, it looks to be a pretty good measure.For what it's worth, this blog (Rick Sincere News and Thoughts) has a "dollar value" of $7,665, for tenth place among all Virginia blogs, just ahead of Black Velvet Bruce Lee and just behind a six-way tie for ninth place. While my dollar value remains the same, my ranking rises to seven among conservative blogs.
Any Virginia blog ranking that fails show Not Larry Sabato and Bearing Drift at the top of the charts is, in my opinion, suspect, and fails the sanity check.
These rankings are not intended to offend anyone and are simply reflective of measurements and algorithms developed by someone with no interest in Virginia Politics and completely objective in their calculations.
Top-dollar-value political blogs in Virginia are Not Larry Sabato ($210,787), Bearing Drift ($109,500), and Vivian Paige (also $109,500).
On the measure called "global ranking," this blog places 37th overall among Virginia political blogs and 23rd among Virginia conservative blogs (global rank: 4,336,918). The top three in global rankings are Vivian Paige (global rank: 226,490), Bearing Drift (rank: 239,458), and Virginia Right! (rank: 292,312).
In terms of "local ranking," this blog is listed 22nd among all Virginia political blogs (local ranking: 712,222) and 14th among Virginia conservative blogs. The top three political blogs by this measure are, once again, Vivian Paige (local rank: 43,245), Bearing Drift (rank: 44,538), and Virginia Right! (rank: 67,745).
The full universe of blogs ranked in these three categories seems to number 73, though I might be misreading that figure. If so, the number of conservative-leaning blogs is 51 and the number of liberal-leaning blogs is 22.
Although this is a static picture of Virginia's political blogosphere as of January 2, 2011, Tom White says he plans to rerun his survey on a weekly basis. Tune in to Virginia Right! next week and subsequently for results of future horse races.
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Your blog is an increasingly rare species in the blogosphere; where ideas are freely exchanged and allowed to stand on their own merit.
ReplyDeleteAs someone who has participated in numerous blogs since their very beginning, I can attest that, when blogs were new, we could use them to read input from many of our fellow citizens; like a virtual town hall. However, the “voices” in the blogs today, are mostly from paid operatives from PACs and the two main political parties, who use multiple fake names to create the illusion of actual public interest in, or support for, a particular position.
Some of the most fiercely partisan blogs, block opposing views or have stopped accepting posts from other citizens, altogether.
A Norfolk based blog appears to have created a virtual Potemkin village with a whole cast of “imaginary friends.” Readers of that blog are likely seeing mostly one voice, relayed by several fictional characters.
Blogs are simply no longer a source of independent input from the citizens. Any person serving in a position of authority, would be reckless and foolish to judge anything seen on today's blogs as anything other than a contrivance.