As I prepared to sign the contract for our next blogging conference, I decided to do a little analysis of blog-centric Wall Street Journal editorial coverage. My thinking was to see how many articles covered business blogging, and see what the trend was over time.
Based on previous searches, I knew searching for the word “blog” within articles was not going to be a solid indicator of editorial coverage, as so many pieces now include text like “check out his/her blog at…” etc.
I decided to search on the word “blogger” and found the headlines that resulted overwhelmingly contained relevant coverage of blogs and bloggers in a business setting. As the chart below shows, growth is significant, and the trend-line is not flattening.
The 2006 count of 222 was extrapolated from the actual count of 121 as of 7/19. Since 2006 is not over, I counted the number of articles so far this year, and then assumed the same rate of article appearance for the remaining months.
2005 saw 80% growth in mentions over 2004, and 2006 looks to beat 2005 by a whopping 150%. Encouraging!
No idea if this is any indicator of blogging acceptance, but it seems to me that it may at least relate to interest. Given these numbers and how they track with our previous numbers of conference attendees, this indicates to me that our comparatively intimate venue space may just get sold out. We’ll see…
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
vaspers the grate 07.27.06 at 11:32 am
This content analysis is of interest from, as you say, an interest level, a temperature indicating the heat of conversation revolving around the word, and hopefully the practice of, blogging.
Not blog acceptance, however.
That would require a semantic analysis of the content analysis results.
Judging from past articles at WSJ, and the MSM in general, especially newspapers, I’d be very slow to say this is a good thing, all these mentions.
How often is it, “the bloggers are spewing forth their unedited, non-journalistic opinions”–? and such?
Steve Broback 07.27.06 at 11:21 pm
Right, this can’t be construed as acceptance. It is likely a non-trivial indicator of interest though.
I find the WSJ coverage to be very objective in this regard, very few articles about “bully bloggers” and a LOT of coverage on how influential bloggers are these days.
The numbers speak for themselves. The WSJ is THE daily business paper for North America, and their coverage of this topic is exploding. They write about what they think is of interest to their readers…
vaspers the grate 07.28.06 at 6:07 am
they regurgitate and their coverage of blogs has been worse than clueless
vaspers the grate 07.28.06 at 6:09 am
P.S. Steve Broback sounds like a paid enthusiast artificial WOM buzz agent.
Teresa Valdez Klein 08.01.06 at 4:29 pm
Vaspers: I can assure you that Steve is receiving no payments from the WSJ. His enthusiasm is genuine and - IMHO - well-deserved.
Yes, the Journal has yet to fully grok the blogosphere, but they do cater to the business community with exceptional prowess. Whether or not they’re spot on in their coverage and analysis of the blogosphere, their awareness and coverage has spiked dramatically.
That’s a statistic that interests us greatly because we’re sitting right at the intersection of business and the blogosphere.
But seriously man, take a chill pill. We really appreciate your commentary and participation, but please quit making baseless accusations that Steve is taking money from someone without being up front about it. That’s totally not cool.