Recon’s Black Ops

08/18/2007: Michelle Malkin has undertaken some attempts to get the source material that served as the basis for an Ellen Goodman column.

Personally, I think Malkin is wasting her time for one very important reason: the material is moot.

Let’s examine what Goodman said, and determine if she is even making a meaningful point.

I began tracking the maleness of this media last spring while I was a visiting fellow at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy. An intrepid graduate student created a spreadsheet of the top 90 political blogs. A full 42 percent were edited and written by men only, while 7 percent were by women only. Another 45 percent were edited or authored by both men and women, though the “coed” mix was overwhelmingly male. And, not surprisingly, most male bloggers linked to male bloggers.

What she is saying is that:

1. the top blogs were overwhelmingly written and maintained exclusively by men: a 6 to one ratio.
2. Male bloggers are linking mostly to male bloggers.

Why is that a bad thing? The blogosphere is as close to a free market as you’re going to find.

I know I am not even close to the top of the politiblogs–or any other sector of the blogosphere for that matter. Is that reflective of some bias against Christians of Iranian-Kurdish descent? Hardly! It means that I either (a) am not aspiring to be higher-ranked or (b) my writing just sucks or (c) a lack of focus on any particular sector of the blogosphere, or (d) some combination of all the above.

That most of the top politiblogs are male-only is indicative of men being attracted to the political end of the blogosphere. I’d venture to say that male bloggers are more likely to be IT professionals, engineers, entrepreneurs, and other workers for whom Internet savvy is part of the territory, than are women.

This may sound sexist, but I’d also venture to say that–in general–the men in politics are usually more likely to appeal to a broader base of America than the women in politics, the latter of whom are overwhelmingly liberal.

Mil-bloggers, due to the nature of the topic, are more likely to be men than women. And don’t forget that mil-blogging is inextricably linked to politics.

To make a long story short, Goodman is raising a non sequitur. If women want more representation in the blogosphere, they can earn it. There is no glass ceiling in cyberspace. Men are not conspiring to keep women out of the arena.

As for Malkin, she is wasting her time investigating the substance of what was actually a moot point.