Surveys are always fun even if you’re not sure what they mean.
Michael Silence did a write-up today on a survey Randy Neal did on his popular Knoxviews.com site.
The survey at best only represents what the demographics of the community site, knoxviews.com, look like. At worst, it’s the demographics of only the people that responded. But the results are still interesting.
Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit.com says Neal’s visitors look a lot like his. And they are all not too different from knoxnews: over 40 and upscale.
Tags: blogoshere | community journalism
They do differ from some surveys of the national picture, such as here, where the age at least skews younger.
But knoxviews’ writers don’t delve much in entertainment, trends, lifestyles. It’s not particularly hip or cool. It’s basically news and politics or politics and news. Sometimes indignant, sometimes outraged, often irreverent. As Neal says, its topics aren’t aimed at the youth market.
I suspect many of the readers are people looking for the “back story” on Knoxville and East Tennessee political machinations – or at least some context to the events. And I’m sure the people Neal and the other Knoxviews bloggers are writing about are among the readers.
Obviously, he’s been very successful at creating an active community of readers (and contributors). Four hundred thousand page views a month with zero dollars for marketing is excellent traffic in my book for a locally focused site in a metro market the size of Knoxville.
And I suspect the survey does represent his overall audience: older, professional/white collar, engaged in the community. And they appear to read newspapers or their Web sites (thanks!).
UPDATE:: Few American adults use blogs to get news . I missed this when it moved on the wires and the story’s statistics really aren’t as negative as the headline, but anyway.