Arianna and Markos were absurdly hailed as serious rivals of DrudgeReport.com. Ana Marie was given a primo job at Time magazine. All three had book deals and were showered with glowing reviews in the New York Times, The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, USA Today, People, and The Village Voice. They were guests on respectable news shows like NBC’s Meet the Press, ABC’s Good Morning America and CNN’s Reliable Sources, as well as non-respectable shows like MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann. In addition to excessive coverage, the media insisted these bloggers were rising stars and changing politics as we know it.
While their stature may have risen, their book sales did not. According to Nielsen Bookscan, Markos, Ana Marie and Arianna all had disappointing book sales despite their hype. In its first week of sales, Markos’s book Crashing the Gate sold only 253 copies. Marie’s Dog Days, a novel based on her blogging experiences in DC, sold just over 5,000 copies. Arianna has written two books since launching her blog and neither have made it to the New York Times’ bestseller list. Her most recent was a feel-good bore titled, On Becoming Fearless, published in September 2006. It sold less than 27,000 copies despite massive mainstream media promotion and all of Arianna's rich friends.
Perhaps these numbers provide a truer picture of their online readership. Sure they can boast about inflated hits on their sites, but when it comes time to pay for content their fans aren’t lining up in bookstores.
HuffingtonPost.com and DailyKos.com will never reach the depths of Drudge because they are the county fair freak shows. At some point, everyone – liberal and conservative, young and old – goes in to gawk at the freaks. On their way out, reasonable people will agree that while it might have been entertaining for a few seconds, it was also a waste of time (and money).
Lisa De Pasquale
Lisa De Pasquale is is a writer in Alexandria, VA. Miss De Pasquale was previously the director of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), where she oversaw all aspects of the conference from June 2006 to April 2011. Prior to CPAC, she was the program director of the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute. In 2010, she was named a “Rising Star” by
Campaigns & Elections magazine in their annual list of top political leaders under 35. She has written articles for Townhall.com and Townhall Magazine,
Human Events, The Daily Caller, Washingtonian, the St. Augustine Record, The Washington Times, The Houston Chronicle, and the Tallahassee Democrat. Originally from Florida, Miss De Pasquale received a B.A. from Flagler College in St. Augustine.
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