Will Blogs Kill Political Magazines?

The NYT has National Review's traffic at 788,000 unique visitors and The Weekly Standard's at 490,000 last month. What struck me, unless the numbers are off (and in web traffic, it's sometimes murky), is that by the standards of some blogs now, those don't seem like big numbers. I bet Malkin or Reynolds are in the same ball-park, if not more successful. So what happens to the conservative magazine when most political debate is online and one or two single conservative blogs can have more readers than an entire brand, like Buckley's fast-evaporating National Review or Kristol's now-tainted Weekly Standard? Is there a shift in the balance of influence? Who is more influential - National Review or Michelle Malkin? The Weekly Standard or Glenn Reynolds?

The difference, of course, is that NR and TWS have buildings and staffs and commission and pay for articles and columns. But opinion magazines have never really paid competitively - because opinionated people are writing not just for money but for influence and for the cause.

But this applies to bloggers too of course: many of them find other ways to make money but use their blogs to help change minds or just express themselves. And they can instantly reach as many readers as NR subscribers. So the competition for the opinion-reader is intense. And the financial edge of individual bloggers with relatively no overhead and free content will surely undermine the clout of such magazines over time.

It may be that the blogosphere will kill off opinion journalism as we have known it. In so far as that might mean less groupthink, less control by a few big money machers, and lower barriers to new talent and expertise, that strikes me as pretty good news overall. Or maybe the print magazines will hang on as appendages to the online debate, as a way of milking those email addresses for money and offering a luxury product that will still be worth it. But I suspect that model works better for a monthly magazine like the Atlantic, which is more than opinion journalism, than a bi-weekly like NR, let alone a weekly like TWS. Their days may be numbered.