Girl Bloggers Rule!

Ellen even claims that she’s been tracking the “maleness” of the bloggers.

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

And the gospel according to Ellen is being echoed throughout the MSM where they cite this so-called tracking.

However, Jane Hamsher over at Fire Dog Lake wrote an analysis, Invisible Women, of Ellen’s article in which she questions Ellen’s methodology

What exactly was the methodology behind this study? The “top 90 political blogs” would necessarily includes right wing blogs — Powerline, Instapundit, Little Green Footballs and the rest of the right wing wrong-o-sphere certainly tend to skew white and male. Yet Goodman is drawing conclusions about “liberal political blogs” based on this study. Which is it? I’m reminded of Chris Matthews’ comment to Mark Halperin: “So there is a right-wing net roots as well as a left-wing net roots?” People tend to overlook them because of their irrelevance, but they are well trafficked and they do exist.

Jane also provides a few FACTS to serve with the Corporate Embedded Main Stream Media’s spin:

1. Arianna Huffington at the Huffington Post. 70 million page views per month (reported). Nobody has the influence and reach she has on a day to day basis.

2. Daily Kos. 5 million impressions per week. Front pagers McJoan, BarbinMD, MissLaura and SusanG I would estimate get at least 50% of the front page real estate over there.

3. Crooks and Liars. 1.8 million impressions per week. While John Amato spends his days watching cable news and making video clips, Nicole Belle alone is responsible for a majority of the front page writing.

4. Eschaton. 658,000 impressions per week. Duncan Black is pretty much a one man band, but when he’s on vacation two of his four regular guest posters are women, Avedon and Echidne (though lord knows, Thers is trying).

5. Americablog. 563,000 impressions per week. Front pager Pam Spaulding.

6. Firedoglake. 500,000 impressions per week. Myself, Christy Hardin-Smith, Siun, emptywheel, watertiger, Tula, Phoenix Woman and looseheadprop.

For Digby’s take read Who are we. Here’s a snippet:

I have to say that I was a little bit non-plussed by this article in the Washington Post today saying that it was nothing but a bunch of middle aged white men. It reminded me of a scene from the HBO show “Six Feet Under” where Kathy Bates takes her recently widowed pal into a department store for some recreational shop-lifting, chiding her for not fully taking advantage of the fact that middle aged women are completely invisible. Perhaps being a member of that contingent myself, I noticed that there were a great many of them present at this convention (and I think I hugged every one of them.) They were present in large numbers at every event I attended, listening attentively and asking probing questions. Next year maybe we can all wear bells or something so the press will know we’re there.

Hell’s bells, Digby! How about these?