Well, Duh

The NYT can't seem to fathom why conservative blogs are more influential than leftist ones. Hawkins has this to say:

There was a lot of undeserved early buzz about a piece at the Old Grey Lady called, "Conservative Blogs are More Effective."

The long and short of this under-400-word article is that conservative blogs have a bigger impact than liberal blogs because we don't tear into Republicans (Only someone who never reads conservative blogs could think that) and because stories broken on the right side of the blogosphere move from the, "pre-existing media infrastructure," conservatives have built up (as if ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, etc., etc., aren't part of the left's, "pre-existing media infrastructure.")

The article is garbage, but it is correct when it notes that blogs on the right have a bigger impact than our counterparts on the left, despite drawing less traffic on the whole. However, the "why" is all wrong because of ideological blinders.

The reality is that liberal blogs aren't particularly effective because the liberal mainstream media beats them to every big story. The lefty blogs are like hyenas living off the scraps that lions leave over. The only stories they get to cover are ones that the MSM has already blown off because they're unimportant (See Jeff Gannon controversy) or because they're dry wells (See the Downing Street Memos).

On the other hand, conservative bloggers regularly get to cover stories the mainstream media has spun to the left, underplayed, or ignored completely. For example, MSM simply had no interest in giving a fair shake to the Swift Boat Vets for Truth or trying to debunk Dan Rather's fake memos so the field was wide open for conservative bloggers to pursue the stories.

That's why right-of-center blogs are likely to keep on making a bigger splash than the lefty bloggers: we're going after completely different game than the Mainstream Media while the libs have to compete with their more competent, more credible, more persuasive, better funded brethren in the MSM.