While both Tyler Cowen's Marginal Revolution and Andrew Sullivan's The Daily Dish can be described as political blogs, their approach to blogging is considerably different. In no small part, this can be attributed to the differences between the two men - insofar as we can claim to know them (and blogging, like so much else in the internet world, is rife with the fudging of lines between persona and personality, and other such post-modern silliness).
Sullivan is excitable, passionate, occasionally overwrought, and, above all else, idiosyncratic. A day reading The Daily Dish will entail a wide variety of topics and mediums - links to articles about atheism or faith; videos of dogs doing frequently bizarre, but always cute, things; longer posts about President Obama and his critics; Sullivan's take on what the national political discourse says about the contemporary American soul; a video embed of one of his favorite moments in the long-running "South Park" television show - but in their own kinetic way, these disparate subjects gradually begin to be seen as comfortable residing beside each other under the umbrella of Andrew Sullivan's mind.
Cowen, on the other hand, is calm, deliberate, understated, and genial. And while the George Mason economics professor is exceedingly intelligent, and capable of conversing on many topics beyond his primary area of expertise, unlike Sullivan, Marginal Revolution tends not to stray far from its comfort-zone, in which Cowen, in unpretentious prose, shares his pragmatic libertarianism (with an emphasis on the economic, rather than political or philosophical, portion of the ideology). While Cowen will at times talk about contemporary politics or even some aspect of life that has nothing to do with political maneuvering or the Rational Actor theorem, such forays are brief and measured.
But while their blogs' differences can be easily related to the men as we imagine them, there is likely also a clear economic motivation. Although Sullivan still periodically writes longer pieces for The Atlantic (his blog's home-base website), and maintains his regular column for the London Times - and although he first ventured into the spotlight as the editor-in-chief of The New Republic in the 1990s, and is the author of multiple books - the success of his blog has indisputably catapulted the man into another level of fame and recognition. The Daily Dish's audience is huge (and growing) - in the millions. It would be unfair to say that Sullivan caters his blog to as wide an audience as possible - he often gets into arguments with his readers, seen through his daily "Dissent of the Day" feature, in which he reposts a perturbed reader's email - but it would be foolish not to see that the Daily Dish's many interests help to underwrite its primary one: traffic.
If you don't care much about Barack Obama, then that's fine; you can ignore all of Sullivan's posts about the President's cunning and skill and instead focus on his writings on the Catholic Church. Don't care for the Church? Then ignore those posts, and see what he has to say about Gay Rights, or, as he calls it, small-c conservatism, or Israel, or facial hair (one of his more endearing obsessions), etc. With a truly insane output - around 50 posts-per-day - it's no exaggeration to say that one could find a full 30% of the Daily Dish's discussion tedious, and still spend half-an-hour lolling through its many links and quotes.
Being an academic first and a blogger second, Cowen can afford to keep his audience small with wonkish musings on whether or not taxicabs are "allocated optimally." He doesn't shy from using phrases that are confounding to those who've not had the privilege of taking an economics course or spending their days surfing the blogs of economics professors and gaining a layman's understanding, and his post-rate, while far from sluggish, is nowhere near Sullivan's manic output. Unlike the Daily Dish's ethic of instant-gratification, Marginal Revolution is where one goes if one is looking for a smart libertarian's view on the bailouts or perhaps, if Cowen's feeling provocative (which he almost never is) Milton Friedman's legacy.
Perhaps one of the biggest differences between the two websites, though, is commenters. While it may seem a trivial thing, allowing users to comment or not, I believe that it can have profound effects upon a blog's overall marketability. For although commenters can frequently bring a lot to a blog, and the establishment of a community tends to be vital - especially in the early days - towards a blog's ultimate success, commenter communities intimidate those who've stumbled upon a blog for the first time (or, as long-time commenters would call them, n00bs). Further, comment threads can often devolve into the kind of name-calling and mud-slinging that defines much of the internet - and it's this kind of stuff that's not only bewildering, but scary, to browsers who've not yet formed allegiance to one blog or another.
Cowen's got commenters and, unsurprisingly, they're overwhelmingly as civil, thoughtful, and seemingly well-balanced as Cowen himself. But the commenting ability reinforces Marginal Revolution's self-presentation as a sort of well-meaning club. The Daily Dish, meanwhile, has long been comment-free, and as its traffic continues to inch upwards, it's unlikely that this will ever change. After all, if it's hard to get a few thousand mostly anonymous people to get along, imagine how difficult - no, impossible - such an endeavor would be when dealing with millions.
If you don't believe me, check one of the more popular messageboards on the internet, 4chan.
On second thought, don't.
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