The fifth installment of Technorati‘s “state of the blogosphere” round-up studies the impact of blogs on mainstream media. Data shows that the most influential sites are still the mass media heavyweights: NY Times, Washington Post, BBC etc. But the most popular blogs are not far behind. In looking at the graph below, it’s important to bear in mind that what’s being measured is number of links, not page hits. Technorati gauges the influence of a site by the number of other sites that reference it.