I’ve always been amused at my fellow bloggers who claim influence beyond their importance, publishing endorsements and “breaking” news (I think we all know who they are). This is a blog - the traffic is healthy enough, but what I’ve always thought important is who reads what you write, not necessarily how many people read what you write. I am much more interested in checking the source of our traffic than the amount of it. One day I am going to write a book about mainstream media stories inspired by blog posts.

That being said, Michael Silence notes a Harris Interactive poll that may compromise my theory

Reuters touts a new Harris Interactive poll showing about 22 percent of those surveyed read political blogs on a regular basis. That’s nearly one out of every four people. But the Reuters angle is: A majority of Americans do not read political blogs, the online commentaries that have proliferated in the race for the U.S. presidency, according to a poll released on Monday.

Well, a majority of people don’t watch cable news, either. Or read The New York Times, which you can get by subscription practically anywhere. Taking the Harris poll at face value (and Silence does the math for me), that means approximately 67 million people read blogs. One could make a fairly safe presumption that those reading political blogs are probably all voters in a statistically significant sense. Consider also that 122 million people voted for president in 2004. By the results of the Harris study, half of everyone who voted for president in 2004 reads political blogs on a daily basis.

I personally think that number is high, as Harris’ methodology appears to have some rather glaring flaws. But if it is not far off, mainstream media outlets have reason to feel the heat.