The Memeorandum Leaderboard

By Cernig

We at The Newshoggers find ourselves in august company this morning, with the publication of the first ever "Memeorandum Leaderboard". Gabe Rivera at memeorandum writes that the leaderboard "lists the sources most frequently posted to memeorandum" and takes only headline sources, not discussion links, into account. "Sources are ranked by Presence, the percentage of headline space a source occupies over the 30-day period". Gabe writes in an email that his leaderboard, which tracks both MSM and blogs, "is a good way to spot sources actually shaping the national political discourse, not just a 'best of the blogs'."

The list contains a couple of surprises, but the top ten are fairly predictable:

1 New York Times
2 Washington Post
3 Associated Press
4 The Politico
5 Think Progress
6 The Atlantic Online
7 The Corner
8 CNN
9 The Hill
10 CNN Political Ticker

Looking at the rest of the list, one thing jumps out at me - bloggers rely on blogs as sources out of proportion to their actual traffic. By which I mean, far more blogs are headliners on memeorandum.com - probably the most popular blog aggregator going - than their MSM competitors. That may just be the blogger "echo-chamber", but I suspect that it's driven primarily by blogs getting to breaking news earlier and to news the MSM isn't blanket-covering.

Up the top of our page, we claim to bring you "the news less travelled". That, I think, is why tiny Newshoggers makes an appearance in the leaderboard, rubbing shoulders with the big guns:

84 The Carpetbagger Report
85 Washington Wire
86 Christian Science Monitor
87 Marginal Revolution
88 The Newshoggers
89 Jules Crittenden
90 protein wisdom
91 National Review Online
92 McClatchy Washington Bureau
93 Ynetnews
94 RushLimbaugh.com

Although I have to say, this proves not enough people pay attention to the excellent McClatchy news service.

My thanks to Gabe for the heads up, and to his impartial but obviously well-trained web-spiders for their good graces.