Day: December 28, 2008

2008’s influential blogs

I’m back to live blogging after my Christmas trip to Florida…did you notice?

As you may have guessed from my summertime forays into Shorebird of the Week, I’m a bit of a statistics freak. So when the minds of BlogNetNews.com came up with an “influence ranking” obviously tracking the ratings through time appealed to me. (It didn’t hurt that I was one of those ranked; in fact, each week Maryland has had a ranking monoblogue’s been included. I think the streak is 81 straight weeks, including this week’s #3 ranking.)

For the first time, we have a full year to go by insofar as the overall rankings go. During the summer, however, they added several subcategories of interest as well – dividing the Maryland blog world into conservative and liberal camps, and adding an “experimental” per-post influence rating. Thus, I have four Top 20 lists (I’m including the Delmarva list I participate in as well) and one Top 10 list. Oddly enough for a state considered blue, there’s only a handful of liberal-leaning blogs which were rated by BlogNetNews so they only have a Top 10 list.

This is going to be ancilliary information to my upcoming 2009 Guide to the Maryland Blogosphere, which I’m attempting to finish for the first full week of the new year.

Let’s begin with the overall list for Maryland. The Eastern Shore is well-represented on this list, and the number in (parentheses) afterward is the applicable 2007 ranking.

Maryland’s politically influential blogs 2008 (overall)

  1. Salisbury News (4)
  2. monoblogue (2)
  3. Red Maryland (5)
  4. Pocomoke Tattler (7)
  5. PolitickerMD (-)
  6. Brian Griffiths (1)
  7. Charles County Cafe (17)
  8. Worcester Right (15)
  9. Maryland Politics Watch (19)
  10. Delusional Duck (8)
  11. Free State Politics (3)
  12. Delmarva Dealings (18)
  13. On The Record (-)
  14. Baltimore Reporter (9)
  15. Gunpowder Chronicle (-)
  16. The No BS Zone (-)
  17. Inside Charm City (-)
  18. Maryland Politics Today (10)
  19. Annapolis Capital Punishment (14)
  20. The Duck Unplugged (-)

Blogs which fell out of the Top 20 from 2007 included The Hedgehog Report, The Candid Truth, Annapolis Politics, Kevin Dayhoff, gaithersblog.net, and The Main Adversary. Most of those remain active but didn’t compile enough points to make the 2008 list.

There’s two sites which may not make the 2009 list because they’ve been placed on hiatus, those being Free State Politics and PolitickerMD. As always, tastes of readers and the effort placed into the sites by their editors also can make a difference.

As I noted above, there were several new categories of websites which made their debut in 2008. I’ll begin with the per-post category, which essentially to me means each post has more bang for the buck. It gives some advantage to infrequent posters, but based on the list above the rankings BlogNetNews came up with seem relatively fair.

Maryland’s politically influential blogs 2008 (per-post)

  1. monoblogue
  2. Pocomoke Tattler
  3. Brian Griffiths
  4. Salisbury News
  5. O’Malley Watch
  6. The No BS Zone
  7. Crablaw (now WB & A Blog)
  8. Maryland On My Mind
  9. Howard County Maryland Blog*
  10. Anne Arundel Maryland Politics
  11. Annapolis Politics
  12. Maryland Conservatarian
  13. Lost On The Shore
  14. Conservative Refuge
  15. Maryland Politics Today
  16. Aquaman Questing For Atlantis
  17. Just Up The Pike
  18. Beltway Progressive
  19. The Dagger
  20. Baltimore Reporter

* I needed a tiebreaker…HCMB was ranked in 18 weeks, AAMP ranked in 17.

This was a very strange category indeed, as no one ranked first more than 5 times and 24 different sites ranked first in a particular week. The site Jousting for Justice only ranked twice, but was first both times. The category seems to reward sites which post regularly but not frequently, as a larger number of posts would dilute the per-post rank. And while I had the top overall rank, there were a number of weeks my site didn’t make the weekly Top 20.

Maryland’s politically influential blogs 2008 (conservative)

  1. monoblogue
  2. Red Maryland
  3. Brian Griffiths
  4. Delmarva Dealings
  5. Gunpowder Chronicle
  6. Worcester Right
  7. Baltimore Reporter
  8. Kevin Dayhoff
  9. The No BS Zone
  10. Pillage Idiot
  11. Aquaman Questing For Atlantis
  12. Anne Arundel Maryland Politics
  13. Baltimore History Examiner
  14. The Hedgehog Report
  15. Annapolis Politics
  16. The Political Octagon
  17. Maryland Conservatarian
  18. What A Smell?
  19. Howard County Maryland Blog
  20. Maryland Chesapeake Blog

I’ll grant that this list is not greatly representative because there are only 26 sites which accrued ratings for the year. On the liberal side though there were only 13, so they only get a Top 10.

Maryland’s politically influential blogs 2008 (liberal)

  1. Maryland Politics Watch
  2. Just Up The Pike
  3. Annapolis Capital Punishment
  4. Crablaw (now WB & A Blog)
  5. Maryland On My Mind
  6. Duck Duck Goose
  7. Lost On The Shore
  8. The Duck Unplugged
  9. Beltway Progressive
  10. Insane Baltimore

Something I found interesting is that the liberal side shared 36 weeks’ worth of top rankings among eight sites, with none gathering more than eight. On my side, I’m a greedy SOB since I had 31 #1 rankings out of 36. (I have no idea why since we all put up good stuff.)

Since I also participate in the Delmarva BlogNetNews rankings, I thought it appropriate to check that side as well. These ratings came into being early in 2008, and what made this a little difficult to do was the addition of a number of sites to the Delmarva roster (primarily from the Delaware side) in July. This meant several sites which ranked well early on were bumped out by a large number of new sites.

What I’ve decided to do is a Top 20 list compiled from July 20th, when this influx of new sites began, with the overall year position in (parentheses).

  1. Salisbury News (1)
  2. Delaware Liberal (8)
  3. Delmarva Dealings (9)
  4. monoblogue (4)
  5. Delaware Way (14)
  6. Fix Red Clay (16)
  7. kavips (17)
  8. Pro-Maryland Gazette (18)
  9. Delmar DustPan (5)
  10. Two Sentz – Spreading The Blue Truth (19)
  11. Delaware Curmudgeon (-)
  12. Duvafiles (2)
  13. The Colossus Of Rhodey (-)
  14. Pocomoke Tattler (3)
  15. Delaware Watch (-)
  16. Up A Creek In Lower Slower Delaware (-)
  17. Worcester Right (6)
  18. Delawarepolitics.net (-)
  19. That’s Elbert With An E (7)
  20. Tobinville (-)

The sites which made the overall Top 20 based mainly or solely on the strength of their rankings during the early part of the year were Average Girl In An Average World (10th overall), Talk Of Delmarva (11), Oceanshaman (12), The Shores of Delmarva (13), ShoreIndie (tied for 14th), and ShoreThings (20). Amazingly, nearly 70 sites had at least one top-20 finish in at least one week.

As was the case with the Maryland rankings, at least one of these will likely not make the 2009 rankings as Duvafiles went on a hiatus after the elections concluded.

Perhaps this exercise was somewhat self-serving, but there’s at least one other ego which will be stroked by the results. My contention is that the only way I can improve my craft is to compare it to others in a peer group and try to become the best in the group. I’d love to see a national Top 100 ranking sometime if BlogNetNews really wanted to try something a little more adventurous.

Tomorrow I’ll delve back into politics, although posting will still be somewhat slow with the lack of political news out there.