According to a new CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, relatively few Americans are generally familiar with the phenomenon of blogging, in which individuals, ranging from famous to anonymous, post running narratives of their thoughts and observations on whatever interests them:
[F]ewer than one in six Americans (15%) read blogs regularly (at least a few times a month). Just 12% of Americans read blogs dealing specifically with politics this often. Among Internet users, the numbers are similarly low: 19% and 15%, respectively.
According to a December 2004 Gallup Poll, the percentage of Americans getting their news on a daily basis from the mainstream media is 51% for local television news, 44% for local newspapers, 39% for cable news networks, 36% for the nightly broadcast network news, and 21% for radio talk shows. By contrast, only 3% of Americans say they read Internet blogs every day, and just 2% read politics-focused blogs daily.
Blog readers are younger than the population at large. Although 17% of the public is aged 18 to 29, a quarter of all blog readers (those who read even occasionally) are in this age bracket. At the older extreme, 17% of Americans are 65 and older, but only 6% of blog readers are this old.
There's lots of interesting data at the link, but the article promotes a misconception. Many of the most popular blogs are not really news disseminators. They're not in the same category as newspapers and the evening news. They are more like the op-ed page of the paper or the commentary at the end of the news report. As such, the comparison of blogs to news outlets is a little like comparing hammers to screw drivers.
Power Line notes, too, that the low percentage of blog readers is actually a promising statistic since it indicates that there is still a vast untapped market out there for bloggers to tap into.