Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Top 50

John Hawkins of Right Wing News posts The 50 Most Popular Right-of-Center websites. The Alexa.com ranking only covers those with their own top-level domain, which is the second most significant reason why a "blogspot" blog like NOfP isn't listed. It also apparently is the reason why Instapundit doesn't appear except as part of #23 Pajamas Media, though Glenn Reynolds wouldn't class himself as right-wing.

The top few sites are big journalism, like FOX, WSJ (and I recommend the Washington Times, at #8). But others in the top 10 are sites I almost never link--WorldNet Daily and NewsMax--because I find them unreliable (same goes for #19 Lew Rockwell, #24 The Ludwig von Mises Institute, and #27 the Cybercast News Service). I have no such objection to Drudge, but he's primarily an aggregator, meaning I cite to the links Drudge uses for items discovered there. Same with Free Republic. I can't explain why liberal Lucianne's listed (#30) at all.

A list of websites I frequent would look quite different. In part, that's because I concentrate on sites that provide information (linkers), as opposed to writing (thinkers), because I don't want to pollute my posts with the expressions of others. For that reason, I'm a fan of Hawkins' other blog, Conservative Grapevine, Don Surber's Daily Mail blog and Maggie's Farm. I'm also loyal to Instapundit, though--given his huge audience--building a story around an idea from there often feels like cheating.

The first set of links on my sidebar are some of my favorites. But the larger, second grouping, is not ranked. Among that list are two other right-of-center bloggers I enjoy and always check when writing--MaxedOutMama and Assistant Village Idiot. Further, given my interest in climate change issues, I spend more time than the average bear with National Review's Planet Gore, Anthony Watts and Coyote Blog. Economics also makes me a reader of Greg Mankiw, EconLog, Carpe Diem, TechCentral and The Brussels Journal. Then there's others I respect, such as Sigmund, Carl and Alfred, Wizbang, and Tiger Hawk.

I'm sure I've omitted a few, for which I apologize. Perhaps in the future I'll provide a simple list.

2 comments:

OBloodyHell said...

> because I find them unreliable (same goes for #19 Lew Rockwell, #24 The Ludwig von Mises Institute,

Well, von Mises is an "economics blog", really, and any "wing bending" should be incidental, and, in my, experience, generally is.

Lew on the other hand, IS a political blog. Unfortunately, when Lew stays in economics, he's got his sh** together, just like all he Miseans, but when it comes to politics, Lew's as much a nutjob as any "911 Truther". So I don't consider him to be even vaguely reliable. I once had him argue to me in an e-mail that no polls of Iraqi attitudes could possibly reflect any truth at all because they were all answered at gunpoint (security details sent around to protect pollsters being the "guns").

Assistant Village Idiot said...

I'm in good company then. Thanks.