Blink... and you'll see white male bloggers

I'm embarrassed about my earlier rant. It got a little garbled at the end. But I need just a wee bit more airtime on the WMB (white male blogger) thing. It's this simple: the problem is NOT a dearth of smart women bloggers... or talented minority bloggers. There are plenty of them. (See Halley's TEN NEW VOICES report card.)

The problem (if you agree there is one) is that the MSM (mainstream media) primarily points to A-list white male bloggers when they're talking about the blogosphere. Why? It's an unconscious bias. It's what MSM reporters (who tend to be white males) "see" when they scan the blogosphere.

Malcolm Gladwell devotes a whole section of Blink, his new book, on unconscious bias and how we engage in it all the time.  He cites some hair-raising examples. For example, a study showed that car salesmen spit out different prices depending on who walks into the showroom. A white male gets the lowest price, presumably because he'll bargain harder and drive the selling price lower. A black male gets the highest price... a black woman gets the 2nd highest price quote. A white woman gets the 3rd highest. The point of the study is to highlight the instant, unconscious assumption that minorities and women aren't as adept at negotiating the price down... so the salesman stands to make more money off them. Pretty creepy, huh?

Which explains, perhaps, the sub-title to Newsweek columnist Steve Levy's article, Blogging Beyond the Men's Club:

Sub-title: Since anyone can write a Weblog, why is the blogosphere dominated by white males?

Answer: It's not. Just looks like that to a lot of white male journalists... and probably to some female ones as well.

Do you agree? Click that comment link.

Comments

[Robert]

I agree that there is "NOT a dearth of smart women bloggers" at all. Most of the recent polls I've seen, place the entire blogosphere at approximately 2/3 female.

Where I do see a dearth of female bloggers is in some of the smaller/niche communities. In my particular interest area, PR bloggers, I don't think there are more than 9 listed on the NewPRWiki (Constantin Basturea) PR blog listings. Most agree, I believe, that the lists are likely a pretty complete representation of the community (180+ bloggers).

This would mean that 95% of PR bloggers are male. And they (we) are predominately white, too. Do you know of such a marketing/marcom listing? Based solely upon the blogs I read, the percentage may be a bit higher in that community.

If we added marketing/marcom bloggers to the PR list, we 'might' get up to 10 - 15% - maybe. I would love to see more women practitioners blogging. My classes are usually 90% female. These students need to see a few more female role models, in my opinion. The majority of PR practitioners are female.

[Elisa Camahort]

Debbie: I agree with you. The point is NOT that women bloggers aren't out there, but that today's tools for finding bloggers create a self-contained loop. And the media attention to blogs lately has focused on those same voices that are already in that contained loop. So it just perpetuates the same list of blogging voices being heard.

Since proposing Bloghercon, it's been mostly received positively, but those that don usually say a) there's no problem, but b) if there is, it's because women and men are just different and want different things out of blogging. See, so if there's a problem it's some immutable one that no one has to do anything about, right?

People like the "Blink" explanation because it attributes such facts to unconscious bias, rather than conscious.

But at least Gladwell proposes that we try to do something consciously about our unconscious biases.

[Shawn Lea]

Also, most MSM attention is paid to those whose blogs focus solely on ONE thing...entrepreneurship, PR, cooking, writing, IT, books, etc. My experience is that guys write a high number of those focused Web sites that are appealing to reporters looking for an "expert." Women sometimes have more of a touchy-feely writing style on blogs, even when they are very focused blogs, which I think some reporters think means they are less "experts" and more "online diarists." My perception (based on no facts at all) is also that most women prefer a generalized blog rather than a focused one (present party included).

[J Nilsson]

A bias is of course (for various reasons) very hard to define. But yes, I agree with you, there is a streamlining tendency even in the blogosphere. And MSM does focus on just a few bloggers (be them white, male, Yankees-fans or what-have-you...) But the point I think you are missing is that MSM will never be able to fully cover the blog community. Which is just as good. And bloggers who would like to find alternative views and voices who would otherwise have a hard time reaching out through the news flow in MSM with marginalised (or highly technical or intellectual subjects) can now find likeminded people all over the world. This is also what I wrote in my reply to your post on my blog (http://mediamarket.blogspot.com). Because of the blogosphere I found your blog entry. I didn't agree with you and I think better of you now when you did retract from the old rantings you posted. Some (male) bloggers would probably never show the same intellectual honesty that you did.
I guess this means that you just won yourself another frequent reader. Which would never had happened if it wasn't for the blog community you blame for being streamlined by a male bias.

[Faisal N. Jawdat]

It's a grand scale "but who" from the people who think Glenn Reynolds invented blogging, and that the "blogosphere" extends to people he links to.

[TLaskaris]

I read Steve Levy's article and for some reason I instantly got the feeling that if some would have the means to impose "equal opportunity" on the blogosphere, they'd be doing it in an instant and with the uncommon ardor that characterizes all those who seek "social justice."

The ironic fact is that TRUE equal opportunity already exists in the blogosphere; the only things you need to have in order to mark your presence are a computer, some server space (offered, mostly, for free) BUT, most importantly, an intelligent mind capable of producing lines others want to read. And, let us not forget, it is impossible to determine gender and/or race/nationality of a blogger unless he/she chooses to reveal the facts. The blogosphere is thus the closest you'll get nowadays to a level field in comparison to so many other fields of competition.

Over the years, I have become suspicious of crusades to defeat "bias." Writing a blog should be fun and could generate useful information. Let's leave it at that. Let's not make blogging yet another "civil rights" issue -- because it is not anything of the kind.