Indeed, rather than reinventing the power dynamics of journalism wholesale, the blogosphere obeys many of the same power dynamics as the rest of society and is highly influenced by affiliations with partisan and mainstream media institutions alike. Many of the well-read political bloggers have significant off-line connections to either magazines, think tanks, political organizations, educational institutions, television shows, or each other (through being on the blogger-conference circuit). The costs of entry to the blogosphere may be low, but that doesn’t necessarily make it any easier for people without connections — the same kind of connections you need to get ahead in any other field — to gain prominence.

Tapped (part of The American Prospect) acknowledges most political top bloggers know each other and network with others in their fields.

The top bloggers in America often know one another, sit on panels and in greenrooms together, and go to lunches and dinners together over time. Many were influentials before they become bloggers. The idea that bloggers are some kind of socially isolated sui generis creation of the new medium is laughable. They have real backgrounds and social networks that matter. Some of them are political operatives and some of them come from print media or other fields. But just as no one would ever mistake the New Donkey’s Ed Kilgore for a “citizen-journalist” rather than an informed, well-educated, well-connected commentator with a specific politics, they shouldn’t mistake the Powerline trio for such, either.

New Donkey wonders if this post will spark a ‘yikes’ and…

…set off a backlash among bloggers who (a) fear the blogosphere is being taken over by Washington and/or Establishment Types, and (b) really freak out at the idea that Washington and/or Establishment Types are eating, boozing, and shmoozing together in order to promote each other at the expense of their less-connected peers.

He argues that Establishment blogs invading the blogosphere are a tribute to the medium’s influence. This remains as far as I can see a relatively US concern. Iran has arrested 24 of it’s 73 thousand bloggers. There are rumblings from time to time about Main Stream Media in Canadian blogs and even less in Australia, the UK and New Zealand. The oppostional mentality is less evident.

But secondly, whatever advantages Establishment bloggers have, everybody else remains just a click or a google-search away, and the quality and value-added of non-Establishment blogs continue to bubble up. I’m forever discovering that some blog I read now and then is being written by somebody living in America rather than Washington–someone with a day job who is light years away from getting a hand on the greasy pole of print or electronic journalism, or from a gig with a major political outfit or think-tank. Like most low-mid-major bloggers, I get a constant stream of email from people wanting me to link to their blogs, and the backlog of requests is a constant source of anxious guilt.

But they are there, in far greater numbers than the people lining up for interviews with Establishment outlets, and boasting qualifications–like the ability to write, and an actual knowledge of actual conditions around the country–that their Ivy-educated peers often don’t have.

Yeah, many bloggers are people who’d be doing faily well in the punditocracy if the internet did not exist, and yeah, the internet has created opportunities for intelligent commentary and advocacy by a whole lot of folks who didn’t go to Harvard and thus can’t get in the door at The New Republic. Let’s hope the supply and demand curves ultimately begin to converge. In the mean time, there’s space for us all.