I know a couple people were following my quest for a Mobbie award for Maryland’s Outstanding Blogs (hence MOBbie), and as it turns out only one of my op-eds cleared this week so I needed a Saturday post anyway. I like to keep this thing going on a daily basis, you know.
I was entered in two categories – Politics and Misfits. There were 21 entries in the Politics category and 29 in the Misfits. Considering that I had lots of better-read competition among subscribers to the Baltimore Sun (who sponsored the contest, so naturally the entry list would be loaded with a Balticentric bias) I figured I would be among the bottom-feeders. Yes, it was essentially a popularity contest based on reader votes.
But I decided I wasn’t going down without some kind of fight, so I heavily promoted myself among my Facebook friends and occasionally when I remembered to do so on Twitter, along with the right-column link that was here until voting concluded yesterday.
What surprised me most isn’t that I started among the lowest group in both categories, somewhere around second or third from the bottom initially. The part I enjoyed was, as the voting wore on, I kept slowly moving up and where I ended up was about my peak for the entire two-week voting period. (I think I slipped one spot in Misfits at the end.) Obviously I had no great illusions of finishing first given my built-in disadvantages; however, the fact that I kept trending up was encouraging because I figure maybe I had a nice little support base.
Cue the drum roll. Since I wasn’t necessarily pushing the “Misfits” category, my 19th place out of 29 wasn’t bad considering. I’d have liked to be in the top 15, but whatever. I’m more pleased that I cracked the top 10 in the Politics category, finishing 9th. Here’s the order of finish so you can see who I was up against.
- Tales of Two Cities
- Annapolis Capital Punishment
- Eye on Annapolis
- Red Maryland
- Darkness Rising: Joe Steffen’s Rants and Raves
- Nailing Jello To The Wall
- Baltimore Politics Examiner
- O’Malley Watch
- monoblogue
- Free State Politics
- The Law On Campus
- Brian Griffiths
- Maryland Politics Watch
- Oliver Willis
- Legum’s New Line
- Baltimore Skyline
- Baltimore Innerspace
- Greater Greater Washington
- Baltimore Red Line Underground
- Maryland Politics Today
- The Conservative Refuge
Obviously some of these are more well read, and some may have promoted themselves to more or less of an extent. I know Jeff Quinton of Inside Charm City (which finished second in the News category) was promoting his site on Facebook too.
So now I know I’m not the most popular political blog in Maryland. But if I got a little more readership across the bay because of the exposure being nominated isn’t such a bad thing. Insofar as I know mine was the only Eastern Shore blog involved and this would be an interesting contest to do locally. Maybe it’s a good poll question to have and if I can find a good polling program to work with WordPress I may try my own. Obviously there’s not as much to work with here but it would make for interesting reading.
In the meantime I’ll be pleased I met at least one of my goals and go on from there. I have a lot of plans for this site and hope to bring readership back to where it once was in the early days. There’s a lot more competition out there, as you can see, but I like to think well-written stuff still has an audience and luckily for me this isn’t my sole outlet anymore. But it’s the one most easily accessible to me and I plan on continuing to practice my craft here to whoever will read and learn from it.
