Bloggers: A Portrait of the Internet's New Storytellers

[Keyword: online journalism, citizen journalism, blogging]. This is one of those articles I'll just quote in full. It's from Poynter on a new study by Pew on bloggers:

New Pew Blogger Study
Yesterday, the Pew Internet and American Life Project released an intriguing new report: Bloggers: A Portrait of the Internet's New Storytellers

A few highlights:

39% of net users (about 57 million American adults) read blogs -- a significant
increase since the fall of 2005. And 8% of net users (about 12 million American
adults) keep a blog.
Most US blogs are personal journals. Most bloggers do not consider their blogging journalism. However, 57% of bloggers include links to original sources either "sometimes" or "often." And 56% spend extra time trying to verify facts they want to include in a post either "sometimes" or "often."
54% of bloggers are under 30.

US bloggers are evenly divided between men and women -- so anyone who continues to ask "where are the women bloggers?" is probably not really looking. (I'm sure this will be a huge topic of conversation at the upcoming BlogHer
conference, which I'm attending.)

These were the most common primary blog topics cited:

"My life and experiences:" 37%
Politics and government: 11%
Entertainment: 7%
Sports: 6%
General news and current events: 5%
Business: 5%
Technology: 4%
Religion, spirituality or faith: 2%
Hobbies: 1%
Health: 1%

Pew surveyed 7,012 US adults by phone, including 4,753 internet users, 8% of whom are bloggers.