The Fold Blog: Making history...for all the wrong reasons: The Slow Painful Truth of the Death of the Conservative Blogosphere

Right winger John Hawkins makes some really good points in his short essay about the coming death of conservative blogs. There isn't much in his 5 points I can disagree with but I feel like something is missing.

The Right is structured differently, true.
Right wingers now spend most of their time on social networks like Facebook and Twitter rather than trolling blogs. Agreed. Agree doubly cause my Facebook feed looks like it's been hacked by the John Birch Society on most days.
The market has changed (matured is what Hawkins calls it). Agreed.
The market is more professional, meaning big names draw the hits. As a blogger myself I totally agree with this. Regular visitors are much harder to come by nowadays than they were just 5 years ago.
Most bloggers just aren't that good. Very true.

These five items, or at least 2-5, apply to all types of blogs not just right wing writers. I would posit that everyone, not just right wingers, are spending more time on social networks. That leaves me still guessing as to why right wing blogs are not as successful or plentiful as moderate to progressive blogs. Surely being structured differently isn't the only reason.

I think the answer still somewhat lies in point number one, however.

1) The Right is structured differently than the Left. We have a large, effective talk radio presence and Tea Parties for new conservatives to sink their energy into. So conservatives have more viable ways to get involved in the movement outside of blogging than the Left did when George W. Bush came into office.

Considering the tea bagger movement really isn't that popular or very organized for right wingers to utilize, that leaves us with talk radio. I'll add Republican television media as an equal function of effective Republican punditry to that and we get a very powerful right wing media force.

So why is talk radio and Republican television media (Fox News) so viable for right wing thoughts, opinions and rhetoric and not blogging? The short answer is talk radio and talk television can't be fact checked as easily or as visibly as blogging can.

For example, when Politifact or FactCheck do a rundown of the facts or non-facts contained in a story on Fox News or on the drug addicted Limbaugh's radio show, the people who watch and listen to such programs never see the fact check. They never see the fact that Sean Hannity is lying through his teeth when he repeatedly claims George Bush created 10 million new jobs. Rush Slimbaugh doesn't go on his show the next morning and tell his listeners about how Rachel Maddow proved he's a lying imbecile. The people consuming those programs, whether it be radio or teevee, are never made aware that what they are receiving isn't The Truth. They are made to believe that what they are hearing and seeing is The Truth and that's that.

Blogging is the polar opposite. On the internet there are an infinite number of ways consumers of media can gain reaction to articles or even see in real time in the comments section just how accurate or lack thereof a post is. Other bloggers can pick you up and rampage your false hoods only to send it on to other bloggers with more visitors until eventually you have to admit you were wrong or just give up blogging. The Right has chosen the latter.

It's not that the Right already has this effective talk radio/teevee apparatus with which to reach its masses. It's just that you can't possibly have a world wide public showcase where you write daily that tax cuts increase revenue and not be laughed off the scene after a certain amount of time. Thus, you get frustrated with the allusion of reality that is caused by not enough Fox News and you go cuddle up back in your cubby hole.