The State of State Blogs

Since 2007, Maryland Politics Watch has tracked the readership of state and local blogs in Maryland that openly provide their readership stats. Over the years, the blogs author, Adam Pagnucco, has noted the rising popularity of local blogs in relation to blogs devoted purely to politics. I first became aware of his rankings in May of 2009 when Tales of Two Cities was cited as the fourth most popular local blog in the state behind Inside Charm City, Just Up The Pike, and Rockville Central.

Adam just published his latest, and likely his last update of these rankings and Tales of Two Cities finished out on top of local blogs. Not surprisingly, fellow HoCo blogger HoCo Rising joined the ranks coming in at Number 7.

Curiously, MPW does not include The Hedgehog Report in his rankings. Perhaps Adam considers that THR is more of national blog than a state blog. For comparison sake, Adam ranks his own blog, MPW, as the top state political blog with 443,217 visits between January 2010 and October 2010 while during the same period THR recorded 585,179 visits. Both of these political blogs enjoy much heavier traffic than the local blogs, though local blog visits grew by 22% over the same period in 2009.

Overall, blog readership in the Free State is healthy and growing.

“In the first ten months of this year, the 46 Maryland state and local blogs that release their site statistics recorded a combined total of 1,770,058 visits. That is 32% higher than the first ten months of 2009 (when they collectively totaled 1,341,387) and 95% higher than the first ten months of 2008 (when they totaled 906,864). The last four months have been the best period ever in the Maryland blogosphere.”

A big thanks and a wag of the wordbones tail to all blog readers and commenters. If you keep reading, I’ll keep blogging.