From E-Commerce Times:
Blogs are becoming a key part of online culture, according to two surveys by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, but a majority of Americans still don't know what a blog is. Only 38 percent of all Internet users know what a blog is, according to Pew.
This, despite Big Media's growing obsession with covering blogs as a story throughout 2004. The New York Times alone published 121 articles in 2004 about blogs. The standards-bearing Time magazine has published 39 articles about blogs and another 35 about bloggers (I recognize that these search results may overlap). They even considered naming bloggers their Person of the Year.
Perhaps this story is really more about the declining readership of newspapers, magazines and mainstream media. Journalism.org reports that, "Today, just more than half of Americans (54 percent) read a newspaper during the week, somewhat more (62 percent) on Sundays, and the number is continuing to drop."
At year end 2004:
"Overall, some 55 million newspapers are sold each day, 59 million on Sunday" - The State of The News Media 2004
"by the end of 2004 32 million Americans were blog readers" - Pew (PDF)
