The end of blogging

Daily Kos, the Alliance for Sustainable Colorado, and ProgressNow have organized a week-long programme in the Big Tent, actually a medium-sized building near the convention centre. One panel including Arianna Huffington and Paul Krugman discussed the challenge of getting people to see what is obvious. "We must be willing to listen to people who disagree with us," suggested Mrs Huffington. A novel and valuable thought.

Next, Anne-Marie Slaughter (describing herself as Mr Krugman's boss at Princeton) asked the eponymous Kos (Markos Moulitsas), Jane Mayer (author of a new book on civil liberties and terrorism), and Van Jones (environmental campaigner) to give President Obama "five to seven minutes of advice". They ignored her, even though she set a good example with a crisply stated agenda of her own: close the prison at Guantanamo; apply the Geneva conventions without exception or equivocation; green the economy; rebuild the international institutions so that they give the emerging powers more voice; and combat nuclear proliferation. Are you listening, Mr President?

The others, also with new books to promote, had interesting things to say about them. My reading list keeps growing. And Mr Moulitsas provided the most surprising statistic of the week. He said the median age of his readers was 45, and that he had more readers aged 65 or over than under 25. Blogging looks to be a dying industry.