Why are most popular political bloggers men?

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The Columbia Journalism Review’s Campaign Desk blog recently ran an interesting article treading that familiar territory of comparing the abundance of public-minded outspoken masculine weblogs with the paucity of famous political blogs by women. The author of The Blogosphere: Boys ‘n’ Their Toys (even the title is reminiscent of the title of a Shelley Powers essay from last year) interviews or quotes a number of the leading blog commentators, from Reynolds to Shirky to Blood and discovers that (1) the blogosphere is not as much of a meritocracy as it is often portrayed and (2) female bloggers seem less interested in focusing exclusively on politics.
The most amusing comment comes from Reynolds:

“Men are programmed to show off to impress women and impress other men, and so blogs where you can be outspoken are naturally appealing to them – although if anybody thinks blogs are impressing women,” he adds, almost parenthetically, “they’re in trouble.”