What does all this mean, well on tv and on the net you can get what you want. So, if “our” blogs do not have the eye of the world, it is because they do not care….yet. It does not take long for geenrational gaps to close and all of a sudden you have people that only know blogs in the world!

Michael Rowles
SMB Security
CopiaTECH

It's not even traffic that matters, it's accessibility. We don't present news that is easily accessible to “normal” non-geeks. I am not the biggest fan of msm, but what they are very good at is making their content easy for large numbers of people to read and understand.

I also agree with the source of the problem. I think we all tend to forget that our Internet use does not represent “common” Internet use. I have trained several relatively tech savvy individuals who knew nothing about “Web 2.0″ outside of Facebook / MySpace and -maybe- Digg.

We are dealing with several things here, lets break them apart.

The first, traffic. If one looks at total circulation (including both print and online), mainstream press wins hands down. Orders of magnitude more people -read- the mainstream press and the demographics that read mainstream news sources are much broader. I use a “water-cooler” definition of mainstream for this article. Mainstream news stories are concepts accessible enough for diverse groups of people to spend time talking about.

Thus, I still claim that until we start creating stories that reach a broader audience, it would be difficult for the Techosphere to call itself mainstream.

As for Apples v. Oranges. Huffington Post and Daily Kos are two additional counterexamples to my initial thesis. I would claim that both of these sites are quite mainstream. Why? They cover a brand of news that is easily accessible to a large audience. Even though their traffic might not even be as large as Giz or Engadget, the demographic that they attract is certainly wider than most Tech publications.

We are making huge strides as far as other media entities are concerned. The fact that we get Press Passes means that we are being recognized as being “real” sources for news. This is wonderful, but my definition of mainstream is audience-centric not media-centric, for the sake of this discussion.

Does it matter that the blogosphere isn't entirely mainstream? Not a chance. I think it's wonderful. Information consumption in modern times is definitely more Brookstone than Wal*Mart. The long tail represents boutiques where people can learn about specific interests, mainstream media has always gone with the idea that broader is better.

I can't tell you who is right, but I imagine that we both are.

In terms of breaking into the mainstream, blogs are already main stream. Gizmodo and Engadget (as you mention) are two very good examples, two sites I might add that had press passes at CES, not blogger passes (they have two types). But look outside of tech to the political blogosphere for example, those guys have been getting press passes back to 2004. A lot of these sites do more traffic than most mainstream media sites. If mainstream= acceptance and big readership then blogging has long been there.

I'd note I'm also attending Macworld on a press pass as well. No begging, no problems what so ever. I'll be there covering it next to the mainstream media, and I'm not sure how that makes me not-mainstream, certainly I'm being treated equally as a blogger that would suggest that I'm at the same level

Flip side though: the niche long tail is to be celebrated as well. So what if there are blogs that aren't “mainstream,” that's the very beauty of the blogosphere, there is much richer diversity and choice compared to the MSM. I'm also not sure who is saying the tech blogosphere isn't going mainstream, name them!