Paper Boy

At Tuesday night’s Republican Central Committee, I said hello to a fellow Committeeman I hadn’t seen in months. He mentioned that he’d been reading a lot of my blog in the Statesman. I knew I had been quoted quite a few times in recent Statesman Other Voices columns, an almost daily feature with quotes from bloggers as well as commenters on the Statesman’s website and those who’ve e-mailed the Statesman.

I just had no idea how many times, until I checked the archives out of curiosity. The blog has been quoted five times in the last nineteen days, three times in the last eight days.

It’s an interesting situation to say the least. Overall, I have mixed feelings on it. While, I’ve abandoned the world of Journalism, there’s still something about a newspaper editor believing what you have to say is worth noting. It’s encouragement to me as a writer.

On the other hand, being quoted in the Statesman has (as far as I know) brought me no new readers. It’s hard to gage who actually reads it and rarely does anyone click thru on the Other Views page and visit my blog, perhaps because of somewhat confusing layout, or perhaps because the feature isn’t quite as popular yet. The total number of people who have mentioned my appearances in the Statesman face to face total two.

Of course, the ultimate question is, what’s the reason for the quotes? My theory is that it comes down to a basic lack of conservative voices. To have an interesting round up of other opinion, conservative voices are needed, or otherwise it’s just one side and no real debate. Thus, while I’ve been quoted more often, Richert has keep things pretty much even by quoting quite a few liberal bloggers. I did a search, trying to figure what are the most quoted blogs and opinion leaders that Richert has quoted and these are the results I came up with.:

1) Randy Stapilus-15
2) Adam Graham-9
3) Betsy Russell-8
3) Bryan Fischer-8
5) Red State Rebels-7
5) Mountain Goat Report-7
7) Idablue-5
Huckleberries Online 4
Fort Boise-4
Dennis Mansfield-4
11) Joel Kennedy-2
11) Clayton Cramer-2

He probably quoted others, but this paints a very interesting picture of who Richert has referred to.