so this is mass communication?

Alex Halavais has a great post reflecting on the Chicago Tribune’s declaration that “blogging is dead”:

… they argue that blogs are only read by 9% of Internet users. Email (87%) and making travel arrangements (52%) far outstrip it. This really mucks up all those predictions that blog-reading would replace travel planning and emailing. [...]

Of course Desperate Housewives is watched by a smaller number, but it’s not dead yet. The Tribune itself has a readership much, much smaller than that, and shrinking. Heck, newspaper readership has a three-decade downward readership trend. Maybe they should turn their gaze a bit closer to home.

A similar question regarding blogs was posed several years ago at a panel at the Association of Internet Researchers.

“Why should we bother teaching our students about something that only 1% of the population do?” came the question about the then newly reported Pew data on blogs. I wrote up an answer to that back in 2003 & agree with it today.

I just wrapped up a survey of academics and professionals in the information industry. I’m not normally one to post data pre-publication on my blog, but I think I’ll share some of the basic trends here in the next few days.

Even though this is a metablog, I try to avoid metaposting as much as possible. But after getting a frantic e-mail from a friend of mine asking if I was still alive because my blog hadn’t been updated since November, I should probably explain myself.

I’m thrilled to announce that I will be joining the team in Grady College at the University of Georgia in the fall. This is an exciting move for me & I look forward to all of the opportunities there. So you can see how planning this move has kept me rather busy.

I have also spent the last few months working on some exciting blog projects. These projects include surveys & I didn’t want to “sensitize” my possible respondents if they happened to Google me & find this blog. I’m not the only one who feels that way - Tom Kelleher posted the same sentiments on his blog.

So this being a blog about blog research, it seems fitting I should update you on the all great studies being published. My blog research reference list shows the studies I’m aware of - but I know there must be more. Among my favorites are those by Tom Kelleher and Barbara Miller, Denise Bortree, and a conference paper from Trent Seltzer. You might call it an amazing coincidence - but all of these folks (save Miller) are University of Florida products.