Edelman report on the international blogosphere

Martin points us to this PDF by Edelman, which is a report on the state of the blogosphere in 10 countries worldwide. It’s an interesting 40-page whitepaper, but of course I started with the German blogosphere. However, Germany is disappointing:

In comparison to several of its counterparts, the
German blogosphere is still in its infancy. The
Edelman Omnibus Blog Study found that 85% of
Germans never read blogs, which was the second
highest percentage, after Belgium, among the
10 markets examined. Unlike France and the
United States, few of the blog conversations
that originate in the German blogosphere seem
to find their way into offline conversations or into
mainstream media coverage.

Again and again I wonder why this is the case. But sofar, I haven’t found any satisfactory answers. Media influential Geert Lovink says that it is due to the german editors of the mainstream press – not because of a lack of something in our net-culture. But I don’t see how this could be a strong enough influence on the german blogosphere.