PressThink, A-link, time-sink
PressThink, Jay Rosen's blog, celebrates "PressThink Passes The Quarter Million Mark" (Congratulations!)
Since September, 2003 there have been 250,000 officially recorded visits at PressThink. Plus, some other significant markers in the life of a weblog.
I'm listed as one of the "top referers" (must be "top" meaning quality rather than quantity :-)).
Hmm ... nine months ... (250 x 10^3) / (9 months x 30 days) = (2.5 x 10^5) / (2.7 x 10^2) =~ 1000 visits per day
It's certainly deserved. But the numbers are interesting (regrettably, not too many of those thousand or so seem to be following the link to me ...)
PressThink is a good example of where frequently-updated-reverse-chronologically-oriented writing is workable for a person.
Let me look deeper into what makes it successful. To perhaps run the risk of being accused of sucking-up for A-linking, Jay Rosen is smart, thoughtful, articulate, and many other excellent qualities. But more critical, I think, is the way the topic works "ecologically".
Like the weather, people talk about the press. And again like the weather, there's a constant stream of uncomfortable events, wrong predictions, speculation on what's next, historical background, ahistorical hyperbole, and sometimes lurking fear from the ordinary person regarding ponderous forces which seem beyond control, all of which serve to keep interest.
As an NYU professor of journalism, Jay Rosen is nicely situation to both observe this and provide commentary on it, and to do it well. Which all results in the excellent work which we see. A well-deserved blog success story.
By Seth Finkelstein | posted in cyberblather | on June 01, 2004 11:59 PM (Infothought permalink) | Followups
