The Hotline's Blog Directory

The sheer number and vast diversity of blogs can intimidate those new to the medium. This directory does not pretend to be the complete or authoritative source for all blogs, but it does offer a good starting place for those that want to learn more. This is an ongoing project so please check back regularly as directories focusing on local blogs relevant to key '06 races are added.

*A note on our traffic rankings
Blog traffic numbers are notoriously hard to pin down, especially in one reliable uniform format. To give readers a sense of each blogs traffic size we've crudely used Alexa's traffic ranks for all sites to generate a top 50 ranking for politically focused blogs only. So for example, while Daily Kos has a 2,121 traffic rank on Alexa (Yahoo!'s #1, Amazon #6, and CNN #11), it is the 2nd highest ranked blog in our directory. There are some notable problems with this system (the biggest being that blogs like The Corner have rankings based off of total National Review Online traffic), but what the system lacks in perfection it makes up for in transparency and uniformity.

Many also believe Alexa undercounts lefty blogs generally. Kos argues:

A note of caution to those who would use Alexa to compare blog traffic stats - the numbers undercount liberal sites. Why? Look at sitemeter stats for assorted liberal versus Republican sites. Liberal sites have heavy percentages of Mac users, and there is no Alexa client for Macs so it can't count what Mac users read.

We've also included the Feedster 500 rank for each blog on their profile page. The first Feedster number is the blog's rank vs. other political blogs. The number in paranthesis is the blog's rank against all blogs.