I think this is better than the usual Friday document dump.
You may not know the name Nathan L. Gonzales, but the Deputy Editor for the Rothenburg Political Report introduced himself to me in early June. His reason: he wanted to include monoblogue as the conservative representative site in Maryland for a project he rolled out last December called Politics in Stereo. It took him a few weeks to set up the Maryland home page – although I have linked to it for some time on my sidebar, today it became accessible from the national page. Maryland’s inclusion brings the site up to 19 states.
When you go to the site, you’ll notice that I am one of three featured websites, as I represent the right side of the political spectrum. David Moon’s Maryland Juice is the surrogate for the left, while the Washington Post‘s Maryland Politics blog is deemed to be the representative from the center. (So I think it’s 2 against 1. Hope they can handle me.)
Actually, I was skeptical at first when Nathan contacted me because of my experience with Red County, another hyperlocal political site which tried to do politics on a local and state level. The site is still around but has never really made great inroads to the political conversation outside its original California base. But the advantage of Politics in Stereo for me is that I don’t have to do any more work to place content there – unlike Red County or any of my Examiner pages, they just bring my feed to a wider audience. No muss, no fuss on my part – I like that. I have enough writing to do to keep one site and my various clients happy, not to mention a forthcoming e-book. (Did I mention I’m finishing up work on an e-book? Look for it in the next few weeks.)
But I think it’s also important to note the fact that, out of all the good conservative political sites in Maryland (including well-known ones like Joe Steffen’s Global Rhetoric and Richard Cross’s Cross Purposes, not to mention the multi-contributor Red Maryland) mine was selected. Truly I don’t think there’s a “S” (for sucker) painted on my forehead – since the work on my part is minimal aside from creating the content I normally would anyway – so I suppose I must be doing something fairly well.
So I appreciate the confidence Nathan has in me for growing his site, as well as the increasing readership those of you on your end are providing to me lately. It’s my job to justify both.
Update: Maryland’s arrival today is joined by California and South Dakota. At least one seems appropriate.