Lots of folks keep emailing me to ask why I/we care about winning blog awards. I don’t want to speak for K-Lo who runs the show around here, but I’d be shocked if she violently disagreed with me. I don’t care that much. It’s nice. It’s good. It’s flattering and reassuring. It’s better than losing. But NRO (as I often tell quite a few Corner readers) is about a heck of a lot more than just the Corner. And while I’m just an editor-at-large now, I am still a jealous defender and promoter of this ol’ rustbucket.

That said, it does bother me that the Corner doesn’t get the props it deserves. Journalists are constantly writing stories about blogs, but they don’t think the Corner counts because magazine blogs don’t fit their storylines about the pajamahedeen and all that (historical note: I was writing about writing in my underwear — never mind my spaghetti strainer codpiece — long before anyone heard of blogs). When the Corner pretty much swept the Washington Post’s blog survey recently there was barely a ripple of press attention. That’s fine, in the big scheme of things it’s not a hot story like the release of a hot dog toaster thingamajig. But I just know that if the Daily Kos or some such won those awards we’d be hearing a lot about it. And, I must say, NRO gets it from both ends. We are sufficiently huge that the bloggers often treat us like we’re Big Media. We’re strangers in both lands.

But enough of that. Here’s something I don’t understand. The Corner on a fairly good day can have 100,000+ readers. My understanding is that Instapundit and a few others do even better. I also assume that most blog readers couldn’t bother to vote in such polls. I don’t blame them. But can someone explain to me how it is that the total number of votes cast in the Weblog Awards for best blog is only 37 thousand after days of voting, when you’re allowed to vote again every day. Doesn’t that seem remarkably low? These are the most popular blogs, after all. Is it because the universe of blog readers is much smaller — and much more shared — than we’ve been lead to expect? Is it because for all the enthusiasm at the top, most people don’t care enough about blogs to even vote? Is it something technological or strategic (fear of cookies or some such?). I noticed a similar phenomenon when I ran polls in the very early days of NRO (What was the sweatiest movie ever made? for example). The number of respondents would always be tiny compared to our readership. Anyway, I just don’t get it.