Away from active blogging, that is. I’ve already set up the next several days of posts except for the Shorebird of the Week which I’ll write later tonight once the game is over. It’s not that I don’t enjoy writing posts on a daily basis but I need a few days away to do stupid stuff like see my family and relax after some pretty intense days at work.
But fear not, faithful readers, while the content may be prewritten it’s still fresh to you and I’ll still be about to moderate comments. I’ve had quite a few lately so I’m beginning to think this Congressional race is heating up. And since the Ames Straw Poll occurs this coming Saturday, the GOP presidential field may shrink by the time I return. At the moment, Mike Huckabee and Rudy Giuliani are the leaders for my endorsement, but we still have five parts to go and they get progressively more important – so a misstep by one or both of those two could open things up for another candidate.
Speaking of the Congressional race, I found out the other day that the August WCRC meeting is slated to have Congressman Gilchrest as our speaker. This will be August 27th. I know that more info will be on the WCRC website in the next few days because I just sent our webmaster the summer edition of our relaunched newsletter. (By the way, Andy Harris will also get his turn but I’m not sure we can get Joe Arminio a slot because of other upcoming events that are detailed in the newsletter.)
And there’s one other thing I wanted to get into before I spend a few days away. Lately there’s been a lot of controversy amongst the local blogging world, a little moreso than usual. Obviously we have one person who claims to be top dog with thousands of readers a day…well, good for him. I read the site once or twice a day myself, and he does a pretty decent job running around to cover some of the goings-on in town.
There was a comment this gentleman made on another blog that noted that my readership is down somewhat since he stopped linking here. While it is the case I have fewer readers than I did a couple months ago, something tells me that this is true for many websites of a political nature since we’re between political seasons. I’ll be honest though, it is down from its peak and, while I’m not ecstatic about it, I’m confident that it will come back up as the arrival of cooler weather brings people back to political mode.
I do want to bring up a few numbers though, something this other person’s not willing to do. I keep my Site Meter stats on a weekly basis and have since April of 2006. This is the evolution of readership in that time:
- April 17, 2006 (first full week) – 229 visitors
- August 7, 2006 (one year ago) – 480 visitors
- January 1, 2007 – 679 visitors
- Jauuary 15, 2007 – 1,065 visitors (first 1,000+ week)
- April 16, 2007 – 1,829 visitors (all-time high)
- August 6, 2007 – 1,120 visitors
So I’ve lost some readership but I assumed I would because I decided to do a tradeoff back in early June. At that time I decided I couldn’t be a true news site, in part because of time constraints and also because two or three other local bloggers were covering that territory well. Thus I shifted focus more to statewide and national issues that affect us locally. This shift probably explains the fact that while my readership is less locally it has a larger base. It may also explain why my readership’s not huge but I still rank on the list of Maryland’s most influential blog sites.
And I still think I have the BEST readers of any of the local websites because they obviously comprehend what I say and make good comments based on the arguments I make – some agree, others dissent.
So as I take a few days off enjoy what I’ve placed up for your inspection over the next week. I might be pretty fired up by the time I get back with a lot of pent-up writing to do.
