Odds and ends number 42
As you likely know, this is the post where I pick out a few items worth a paragraph or three but not a full post. So here goes.
Polling is in the news these days – sometimes as a real reflection of the political scene, and sometimes just to make news and push a particular agenda. There are two recent polls which I believe reflect the latter.
I’m usually not too trusting of polls in which I can’t find a political or geographical breakdown, and a recent Washington Post poll fits this bill. Taken simply as a sample of 1,064 adults in Maryland, the Post poll gives Martin O’Malley a 55% approval vs. 36% disapproval – compare that to the 53-40 split in the recent Gonzales Poll, which I can easily ascertain subgroups and methodology in. Other disagreements: a 50-44 split in favor of gay marriage on the Post poll vs. a 49-47 split in favor on Gonzales and the “key issue” question: the economy was the top choice of 49% in Gonzales but only 32% on the Post poll.
Without seeing the methodology besides the sample size, my guess is that the local Washington D.C. area was oversampled by the Post. Obviously the economy is better there than in some other portions of the state, and since the area is more liberal than the rest of the state (hard to believe, but true) the other numbers seem to point in that direction as well.
Who will fund the resistance? (updated)
As I mentioned last night, I added a few new websites to my sidebar links. One interesting add was a site called Zilla of the Resistance, which I had originally run across via a link from The Other McCain. But what sparked my interest again was a link to her from another Maryland-based site called The Vail Spot, which I also link to. Both Vail and Zilla have something in common which I’m sure they aren’t proud of, but has been an issue: the writers have had recent financial hardships, for various reasons, and both were assisted by the generosity of their reader base.
I’m certainly not going to be the first to bring up this point, but who knows? Maybe I can be the last.
And the winner is…
Someone finally uncrowned Ridgely Griffith and afterthegoldrush.
Until late Sunday afternoon it looked like the music-based website would cruise to its third straight title in my Best Local Blog contest. But supporters of Delmarva Progressive dropped well over a half-thousand votes on the poll and enabled that site to snatch away the victory.
With a record 1,001 votes cast, the results came in as follows:
- Delmarva Progressive, 788 votes (78.7%)
- afterthegoldrush, 205 votes (20.5%)
- Chesapeake Journal, 8 votes (0.8%)
Chalk it up as a rare liberal victory about these parts. In fact, the 1,001 votes ended up as a figure just a few tallies higher than the total of all nine preceding rounds (six first-round battles and three semifinals.) It’s a definite surprise given the fact Delmarva Progressive only picked up 10 votes in its semifinal – but it is what it is.
So congratulations to the crew over there for winning the contest, and moreso thanks to all who voted.
Drawing the curtain on this year’s contest does allow me to share a couple other thoughts, though.
First of all, the other day I was speaking to a blogging friend of mine from another part of the state who commented on the lack of websites in her area, particularly in comparison to the number of websites in this region. Obviously many of us deal with politics here but there are a number of other interests represented as well – just look at the contenders I had as evidence. If I were to classify the eighteen websites I selected this year, seven deal mainly with local news, three cover politics, and three could be described as personal journals. There were also blogs which covered sports, local history, music, food, and a fairly miscellaneous site as well. And I’m sure I don’t link to every single local website – there may be another couple hundred out there I don’t know about or just don’t get updated frequently enough for me to link to.
As for the contest itself, I based the original concept on the Mobbies, which is a similar popularity contest among Maryland-based blogs conducted by the Baltimore Sun. For the first two years of the contest’s now-three year run this site was among those nominated in the political category. (The political category disappeared in 2011, swallowed up into the formerly-separated news category.) For a site based on the Eastern Shore, I thought I placed rather respectively when I competed.
In my opinion we have a thriving local blogosphere, but one where civility and useful information is on the endangered list. Maybe a local media outlet needs to step up to the plate and have a contest similar to the Mobbies but concentrating on the Delmarva area. It would be a way to reward worthy websites and encourage the general public to visit them, and perhaps it would be an incentive for others to clean up their act.
Like it or not, the blogosphere is here to stay, and it’s up to all of us to determine its direction. Needless to say, I had my own personal favorites among the eighteen I featured but I left it up to the voters to decide who moved on. There’s a logical next step which should be taken, though, and it should feature those sites Delmarva can be proud of.
Blog poll finals set (and other good news)
Yes, this isn’t a serious, weighty topic, but those of you who are interested will be lapping this up.
For the third year in a row I’ve done a ‘best local blog’ competition for fun and as a way to get a few additional readers during a generally slow news period. Sometimes I get a lot of votes and sometimes just a few make the decision.
Anyway, the winners of my three semi-finals have been determined and will advance to the finals with a winner to be announced on Monday – obviously if you follow the final poll it will be self-evident. But here’s how the three semi-finals went.
My first one was somewhat of a surprise, but not really:
- afterthegoldrush (#5 seed) – 53 votes (71.6%)
- Delmarva Shorebirds Blog (#9 seed) – 20 votes (27.0%)
- Delmar DustPan (#1 seed) – 1 vote (1.4%)
It was a surprise that my #1 seed – which had 367 votes in the first round – only got one vote in the semi-final. But I think I know why it did, because it had a particular website as its opposition. I figured afterthegoldrush would do well, though, since it’s won the first two editions of my contest in 2010 and 2011. And Delmarva Shorebirds Blog was only a #9 seed because it was a wild card – in reality it had the fourth-highest vote total in the first round.
Semifinal #2 was fairly disappointing with the lack of participation. I think it’s because that was conducted over last weekend, when a lot of people were not paying attention because the NFL playoffs were on and the weather was nice:
- Chesapeake Journal (#7 seed) – 7 votes (63.6%)
- Right Coast Conservative (#2 seed) – 4 votes (36.4%)
- Random Thoughts of a Citymouse (#6 seed) – no votes
Honestly, I thought Right Coast Conservative would mop up the competition because it had a first-round vote total far higher than the others. Instead the St. Michael’s-based website moves on to the finals.
The last semifinal was, at least, a little interesting. And it featured yet another (mild) upset:
- Delmarva Progressive (#4 seed) – 10 votes (58.8%)
- The Other Salisbury News (#8 seed) – 4 votes (23.5%)
- Sussex County Angel (#3 seed) – 3 votes (17.7%)
It’s intriguing to me that a left-wing blog won on my right-leaning website, but stranger things have happened.
So on we go to the finals, which will be put up shortly and, because I’ve found weekend polls don’t work so well, will get a few extra days for more opportunities to vote.
Now, the other good news: monoblogue has yet another local sponsor. I’d like to thank local attorney Charles Jannace for jumping on board, and encourage more to do the same. As my readership grows, you may find blog advertising to be an affordable yet effective tool in bringing in business. And only a few spots are left because I’m limiting the number of ads sold here. (Less clutter that way.)
So patronize all my local sponsors and tell others they can help too. As you can see, my rates are very affordable.
Pruning and polling
It’s spring cleaning a couple months early. Actually, we got outside to enjoy the nice weather and took down the tree and Christmas decorations.
You might notice I’ve taken down a few links. I have a (somewhat flexible) policy of linking to sites which are regularly updated, but after they go about three months without a post I delete the link. I figure it doesn’t do either of us good to link to what is essentially a dead site. But if you have a site you think I should link to, let me know and I’ll review it to see which category it will fit into. Who knows, maybe I’ll make up a few new ones while I’m at it.
The other update I wanted to add this afternoon was that I’ll begin the semifinal rounds of my Best Local Blog poll sometime this evening. I actually had a tie in one round so I decided to add two wildcards; those two were the highest second-place finishers. So the seeding for the semifinals is set:
- Delmar DustPan (367 votes, won round 4)
- Right Coast Conservative (143 votes, won round 1)
- Sussex County Angel (23 votes, won round 3)
- Delmarva Progressive (20 votes, won round 6)
- afterthegoldrush (15 votes, won round 2)
- A Chesapeake Journal (4 votes, tied for win in round 5)
- Random Thoughts of a Citymouse (4 votes, tied for win in round 5)
- The Other Salisbury News (162 votes, second in round 4)
- Delmarva Shorebirds Blog (66 votes, second in round 1)
So I have the matchups set to be as evenly seeded as possible; as I said they’ll commence later tonight or tomorrow. As it lays out one of these battles will feature a rematch of the opening round with a new opponent tossed in.
And this time it will be win or go home, as each of the three winners advances. So bloggers better round up their troops and make sure to enlist their support!
Another poll update
I’m working on some other writing today but I wanted to take a moment and catch you up on some results from my best local blog poll.
The fourth matchup was a doozy. At first Delmar DustPan took a modest advantage, but then The Other Salisbury News surged over a short period of time to take a significant lead. But it wasn’t enough as Delmar DustPan stormed back to take the round and advance.
In percentage terms, Delmar DustPan ran away with 69 percent of the vote, while The Other Salisbury News rounded up to 31 percent. Salisbury Soapbox picked up less than 1 percent.
Opening round match number 5 is also an interesting battle between a number of somewhat similar sites from around the region, so we’ll see how that turns out.
Catching up
In case you missed it the last few days, my best local blog contest continues in a relatively subdued fashion after the wild first matchup.
In the second first-round contest between three local sites, defending champion afterthegoldrush advanced with an overwhelming 71.4% of the vote, besting Lower Eastern Shore News (19.1%) and Atomic Donkey Brewing, which garnered 9.5 percent. It’s the only poll where all three competitors received votes.
The third opening round affair concluded last night with an upset: Sussex County Angel pounded its competition with 82.1% of the vote, with Delmarva Observer getting the other 17.9 percent. Salisbury News was shut out this time around.
So the blogs advancing to the semifinals so far are Right Coast Conservative, afterthegoldrush, and Sussex County Angel. The fourth draw is quite interesting to me, so I’ll be excited to see how it comes out when the poll ends.
Seedings for the semifinalists will be determined once polling is complete for the first round. I’ll take a holiday break from polling after my six opening rounds are complete, so the contest will then return after Christmas.
Best local blog: the return
This will be the third year that I provide the opportunity to secure bragging rights as the best local blog around, as determined by my readers. For the last two years, the music-based blog afterthegoldrush has come away victorious thanks to Ridgely Griffith’s loyal following, and he’ll get the chance to defend his title this time around as well.
But things will be a little different this year. Last year I had 24 contenders, but it seems that a number of them have fallen by the wayside over the last 12 months. There are 13 which didn’t return because they stopped posting on a regular basis, and I probably could have eliminated another few which are getting updated rather infrequently – but then I would have been back down to a dozen as I was two years ago. Still, I cobbled together a list of 18 contenders – but if you want to nominate another that’s not on the list feel free to comment and I’ll check it out. But there are some guidelines: the blog must be updated regularly (ideally at least once a week), it must be locally based (essentially within the lower Delmarva area), and it can’t be a personality-based website. Those I have so far are all sites I link to, so there are likely others I’m unaware of.
Given those parameters, here are the 18 which will be contending. An asterisk (*) means they are new this year.
- afterthegoldrush
- Atomic Donkey Brewing*
- Chesapeake Journal*
- Crisfield News
- Delmar DustPan
- Delmarva Observer (formerly Delmarva Dealings)
- Delmarva Progressive*
- Delmarva Shorebirds Blog
- Lower Eastern Shore News (formerly The Salisbury Grinch)
- Random Thoughts of a Citymouse
- Reflections on Delmarva’s Past*
- Right Coast Conservative (formerly Right Coast Girl or just Right Coast)
- Salisbury News
- Salisbury Soapbox
- Sussex County Angel*
- The Other Salisbury News*
- The Pocomoke Public Eye
- Twirling, Twirling, Twirling Towards Freedom
If others are included, I’ll work these into the schedule somehow in order to maintain groupings of three, with wildcards added as necessary.
The first poll will be Monday, so blog owners need to let their supporters know this holiday tradition is back!
monoblogue turns six
Another year, another dollar. Actually, $95.40 to be exact because that’s my server fee for the year.
As I embark on another year of monoblogue and celebrate the achievements of the last, I’m reminded of something I wrote five years ago this very day:
On my previous blog site, my best week readership-wise was 197 readers (according to my Site Meter) but generally I would get between 30 and 50 readers a week. I was hoping for 100-200 a week from monoblogue…
Sheesh, did I have low goals or what? Since that point, I have had over 250,000 readers – and that’s the ones my Site Meter and other tracking systems caught. If you add in the places where I’ve had my works reprinted and republished I daresay I’m well into seven figures. Judging by the decline of my Alexa numbers (lower is good, and I reached my all-time low today of 333,458 for world rank and sit at a near-record 57,457 for U.S. rank) I figure someone has to be reading this space.
Getting an audience isn’t that difficult, though – the trick is keeping them. Once I had over 5,000 readers in a day (my Rushalanche) but most of them have drifted away. Not for lack of trying to keep them, though.
I normally don’t share a lot of readership information (although my Site Meter has been open for most of the time I’ve had it) but when I checked the other night my analytics showed that just under 56% of my readers were “new” while the other 44% or so were “returning” visitors. Presumably, if I had 1,000 visitors in a given time period, 440 of them had visited previously.
However, I also checked the trailing three months and found the percentage of return visitors had increased from 42% to 44% – not huge, but encouraging. Obviously I don’t want 100% return visitors because that would mean my audience had reached a saturation point but I think something in the 50-60 percent range would be healthy. So that’s my first goal for the next year. I don’t doubt readership will jump – I have a mostly political site and it’s an election year – but I want them to be a base for even bigger things in the years to come. So they have to be regular readers and a foundation to build around.
The second goal for 2012 is to fill out my advertiser base.
Unlike some other sites, I really don’t want ads to line both sidebars all the way down the page because, frankly, it looks terrible for the site layout and it’s not fair to the advertisers at the bottom who may never be seen if I write a truncated post. But I would like to first of all maintain my loyal advertisers – thanks goes to John Robinson and the Robinson Family of Businesses, Marty Pusey at The Perfect Dress, and Muir Boda of Sby4Rent.Com – and add three to seven more. I think 6 to 10 advertisers is a reachable goal, and given the fact my readership extends well beyond the local area it may be a good opportunity for national or regional clients. I don’t charge a ton for space, and perhaps it means I don’t monetize this site like I should, selling myself short. But I’d rather have plenty of business charging a little than no business charging a lot.
Oh, by the way, I’m also an Amazon.com affiliate so if you have Christmas shopping to do, by all means do it through monoblogue.
My third goal is going to be the most difficult to achieve. You see, for most of the last three years I wasn’t working outside the home, although that was certainly not by design or choice. When the local building industry went away, so did that fulltime job. And though I have accomplished a small amount of success as a freelance writer for various outlets, it’s not an easy market to break through in because millions of other people around the world fancy themselves as pundits, too.
So now I have a good job but it’s one which frequently necessitates I work for most of my day outside the home, therefore it’s not as easy for me to create plentiful content. Still, in looking at my monthly posting numbers I’ve found that I’ve put up nearly 500 posts over the last year so I get at least one in per day. Surprisingly, I’ve never cracked 60 posts a month or 600 in a calendar year so my pace isn’t that bad right now, and more importantly it’s manageable with my schedule. Granted, there will be times I’m a little behind on the news but my bread and butter is commentary anyway so if you can put up with 450 to 500 posts a year we’ll be just fine. That may violate the idea some bloggers have of writing no fewer than 2,500 words per day but I’d rather write 600 good words than 2,500 words of fluff. (Some take the easy way out and copy and paste to get to a certain number of words or posts, but I don’t – hence the phrase up top “mostly original content.”)
My last goal, though, is probably the most important for my goals in the long run. You see, everything I have built here comes because I have taken the high road, stuck to the facts and reasoned opinions, and stayed away from making this a personality-based site. Unfortunately, from time to time I get caught up in the various personality battles which occur in this small town, no matter how much I try to stay away. I am getting better at this, though, and perhaps it’s a sign of maturity on the part of all the local blogging participants that the “blog wars” are more or less behind us. By no means do all the local website owners like each other, and as a group we ain’t going to be singing “Kumbaya” by the campfire anytime soon, but the differences of opinion seem to be a little more civil.
Admittedly, I don’t think I’m ever going to be everyone’s cup of tea – certainly some readers probably can’t figure out why I do Shorebird of the Week or Weekend of local rock on a political site, but that’s what keeps me from getting burned out.
And Lord knows I don’t often pull my punches when I write, but I don’t lose sleep over my content and that’s what’s important. For a website, respect is the toughest thing to build and the easiest thing to lose.
With that, I start anew on another year of this website. As always, I’m hoping to make it a better year than the last one and there’s a lot of writing I want to get to before the next year closes on monoblogue, including wrapping up a manuscript I’ve been working with off and on over the last three years. It may be ready by year’s end, so if you know something about publishing I’m all ears.
In closing, I want to give thanks to my readers and my supporters. I’m not always on the winning side of the fights I pick and choose, but (as it were) I’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees. There’s plenty of fight left in me and battles everywhere I turn, so there’s no use waiting on me to give up this ship or not having fun in the process.
1 vs. 100
Well, okay, it’s not quite on the scale of the game show but one has to snicker at the thought of covering a protest in front of Andy Harris’s office that draws 20 people. Shoot, the TEA Party got more than that to go to former Congressman Frank Kratovil’s office, brought a noose, and still couldn’t get any local media attention besides local bloggers like me. Never mind that we’d get 300 or 400 for a nice local gathering, whether in the bright sunshine or pouring rain.
Are you being served?
After this post, my readers will either think I’m crazy or revel in my genius. I guess that’s all up to you.
I was having a conversation with a friend the other day when the subject turned to some local news topics. My friend was very adamant that certain points of view weren’t getting out and the conversation turned in a direction I’ll share in a little bit.
But first, let me preface this with a little history lesson. How about winding the clock back to around 1980? Ah yes, the Reagan vs. Carter “are you better off than you were four years ago?” election. I can paraphrase that and ask the question “Are you more informed about local news than you were thirty years ago?”
You see, I don’t know what the situation on the ground was here on Delmarva – apparently WMDT-TV was still in its infancy but WBOC-TV and the Daily Times were already here. It’s similar to what I grew up with in rural northwest Ohio – three local television stations with news at noon, 6, and 11, the one Toledo daily newspaper, and a weekly paper in the closest town. In other words, local news wasn’t that easy to come by because there was only a few minutes devoted to it on television and the newspapers gave it to you a day (or even a week for hyperlocal news) later.
Obviously the game has changed in the three decades since. Another phenomenon just barely started in 1980 was the 24/7 news cycle brought on by cable news networks. Add to that the advent of the internet as a news source – but not just a static source like print, because we can feature audio, video, or both. We even have some real-time aspects and most likely the advances in technology will soon make on-the-spot live video reporting possible for even technophobes like us. (For all I know, maybe that’s available. I just write this stuff and place the jump in an appropriate place.)
Tired of the argument?
You know, once in awhile I have to take my fellows to task.
Perhaps it’s because I have such convincing arguments or maybe I have scared all the liberals away, but I don’t get a high number of comments on my website. (Well, I get a lot of comments but 99% are of the spam variety, which Akismet takes care of.)
So once in awhile I feel I have to give feedback to others. Included in this was a comment I sent in to the newly rechristened Lower Eastern Shore News regarding Jonathan Taylor’s criticism of the two dissenting voters in a recent County Council vote to allow overtime for building inspectors and other county employees in order to approve work on the rolling 4 1/2 day ‘Extreme Makeover‘ project.
My comment addressed three premises in playing devil’s advocate:
- The idea that the county’s FY2012 budget is approved, and a general query as to where he would suggest cutting to make up this expense.
- What sort of lasting impact this national exposure would have, as in if someone could name other cities which have had ‘Extreme Makeover’ homes without Googling it. (I don’t watch the show, so I wouldn’t know.)
- The hypocricy of Taylor complaining about a $10,000 annual expense to the city to provide health insurance for part-time employees but feeling just fine about spending this $7,000 of county money.
I placed none of the seven words which cannot be said on television in the comment, and thought I had legitimate questions. Yet Taylor rejected it, saying he was “tired of having the argument…when you get on this Republican high horse is when you lose reason.”
But I think Culver and Holloway have a legitimate reason for voting their way – citing the fact ‘Extreme Makeover’ is a for-profit enterprise while the county denies taxpayer funds to non-profits – while the other five had their reasons for voting yes, primarily as a boost to the local economy and tourism. (That may be a stretch.) In the end, Taylor got his wish and I said as much. Personally, I would have tried to take the money from somewhere else to make it a zero-sum game so I’m not going to criticize Culver and Holloway for their vote. Nor do I think the other five are off base, since there’s a simple difference of opinion here and we may find the $7,000 is well-spent. Or we may not.
Ultimately Jonathan can run his website as he sees fit, and if rejecting comments because he’s “tired of the argument” is his best defense, well, I suppose I don’t have recourse there. I’d reprint the comment I sent in here on my site but it’s vanished into the ether of the internet like the thousands of spam comments I’ve sent packing have been. (There’s still 4,815 comments here, so that’s plenty of feedback over the years.)
The point is, though, had I been someone who didn’t have his own bully pulpit and decided to use it you would have never known the gist of what I said. I’m not saying I accept every comment I get, because obviously I don’t or there wouldn’t be 375,529 spam comments to my site now vanished.
Instead, my policy has always been that good comments help move the narrative along, so I reject as few as possible. In fact I like the ones which disagree with me because then I have to sharpen my arguments. So if you think Taylor was right, by all means tell me why.
My contention is that if you truly want to add to the discourse, you don’t get tired of the argument. Just ask yourself what else is missing when comments which are otherwise legitimate don’t get through.
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