The Washington Post. The Baltimore Sun. NBC4. WBAL. The Gazette. These are a few of the many sources Marylanders go to for news and political coverage. But no one knows the relative readership of these sources on the Internet, which is becoming the premier platform for information delivery, because they do not report their site traffic. That ends today. Now, for the first time, we reveal all!
The best way to get web traffic data is through openly accessible measuring software like Sitemeter or Statcounter. MPW and many other blogs have one or the other and make them available for public inspection. (Just click on the Sitemeter icon in our right margin to see MPW’s traffic.) We have periodically reported on visit trends for Maryland blogs that use such open reporting systems.
But almost no one in the mainstream media (MSM) regularly reports their site stats. Luckily, we have found a way to get around that problem: Compete.com, a company that measures traffic and drums up business by helping site owners boost it. Compete relies on a panel of two million online users who are diversified by geography, demographics, browsers and more and allow the firm to collect their web browsing data. Then, “Compete’s experts in the fields of mathematics, statistics and the data sciences have developed a proprietary methodology to aggregate, normalize and project the data to estimate US Internet activity. Based on the daily web usage of more than 2,000,000 members in the Compete community, Compete estimates total traffic, rank and other statistics for the top 1,000,000 sites on the web for use by consumers.”
We don’t believe Compete’s methodology is perfect. Specifically, a panel of two million users won’t estimate the traffic of very small sites that well. And let’s be honest: these data are estimates, whereas Sitemeter and Statcounter generate real-time counts. Still, we believe that ballpark estimates contain some value. A site that is estimated to have two million visits per month probably has more users than one that has 100,000 visits. That level of information is better than what we have now for the MSM, which is… basically zero. Furthermore, since Compete measures all sites using the same methodology, its stats should offer apple-to-apple comparisons.
We used Compete’s database to obtain a three-month average (August-October) of site visits for over forty online news sources in Maryland. Compete defines visits this way:Visits are initiated when a user enters a site during an internet session. As the user interacts with the site the visit is live. Visits are considered live until the user’s interaction within the entire internet session has ceased for a 30-minute period. Visits are unique to a session.
This is a fairly standard definition of site visits that is also used by Sitemeter and Statcounter.
For instance, User A enters Yahoo at 9:00. User A checks their email and reviews the week's weather forecast. User A then goes to a meeting at 9:30. She returns at 10:30 and checks her Yahoo email again. Since 30 minutes lapsed between her two interactions User A is considered “one person” that made “two visits.”
Here are Compete.com’s site visit estimates for selected Maryland news sites.
A few notes:
1. We are not surprised that the four largest newspapers have the four most-visited websites. But it’s impossible to tell how much of their traffic is directed to Maryland-oriented content. The Post attracts worldwide traffic for its national and international news. The Times and the Examiner are go-to sites for national conservative commentary. All have readers in the District and Virginia. Despite all this, we won’t dispute their raw size. And isn’t it interesting that the Sun, the Times and the Examiner are all basically tied in traffic?
2. Nine of the next fourteen sites are TV stations, including two based outside the Washington and Baltimore metro areas. Television stations have an inherent potential synergy with the web through their ready access to video, but for the most part, they have not built user-friendly video archives. Wouldn’t it be nice to go to a TV site and quickly assemble a series of clips into one video of the latest stories on your topic of choice? The first TV site that figures out how to let its users customize its content access easily and quickly is going to take off.
3. Online-only news sites get some insider buzz but they have few if any readers. It’s hard to make a case that any are economically viable. According to Sitemeter, MPW averaged 57,867 site visits per month in the August-October period, far more than any of the Maryland online politics sites covered by Compete. But even if MPW maxed out on ads, we would not generate anywhere near enough money to support a full-time author. That calls into question the prospects of any of the online-only news sites with a fraction of our traffic that are expected to someday be self-supporting.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
How Much Web Traffic Do Maryland News Sites Get?
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
MSM Falls for Poll by Former O'Malley Staffers (Updated)
Both the Post and the Sun ran the results of a poll commissioned by Center Maryland showing Governor Martin O’Malley leading former Governor Bob Ehrlich by six points. But what neither newspaper reported is that Center Maryland is a PR site founded and run by former O’Malley staffers.
In January, we tracked $54,802 in political contributions made by the founders, with $21,312 going to O’Malley and 92% of the money headed to Democrats. Since then, Center Maryland co-founder Martin Knott has given $500 to Lieutenant Governor Anthony Brown (6/4/10) and $5,500 to O’Malley in three contributions (an apparent violation of campaign finance law that limits individual donations to $4,000 per candidate); co-founder Howard Libit has given $1,333.33 to O’Malley (in two contributions on 6/18/10 and 8/10/10); and co-founder Tom Loveland has given $500 to O’Malley (8/7/10). None of them gave money to Ehrlich this year. And all of these contributions were made while they were supposedly running a “news site” that reported “straight down the middle.”
This poll is an outlier as almost all the others find O’Malley and Ehrlich neck-and-neck. Given that fact and the above connections, the Post and the Sun should have disclosed the background of those who commissioned it to their readers.
Update: The Post picked up on this almost five hours after this blog post but did not credit us for our research.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Who Will be the Sole Survivor?
Several entities, including a couple with money, are getting into the local online politics-news-aggregation business. But as someone who publishes original political content for free, I can tell you that the margins are low, the work is constant and not all of them are going to make it. In fact, just one of them might be the Sole Survivor.
Who’s playing in the cyber-sandbox at the moment? First, there is the Post’s revived Maryland Politics site (formerly known as Maryland Moment), which is based around John Wagner’s steady statehouse reporting and morning aggregation by Aaron Davis. Then there is Marylandreporter.com, an online startup by former Baltimore Examiner statehouse chief Len Lazarick that depends on right-wing financing. This site also does original reporting backed by daily aggregation. There is also Center Maryland, a project founded by former O’Malley officials who operate a PR firm. It too offers reporting and aggregation, but with a “centrist, pro-business voice” that benefits the PR firm’s clients. And now there’s a new player on the way: a Washington-area local news site backed by Politico and linked to WJLA and News Channel 8. Like the other sites, it will do a combination of reporting and aggregation. Unlike the others, it claims it will have 50(!) staffers. Other than their business model (occasional original reporting and lots and lots of links), the four sites share another common trait: they are all supposed to operate in the black over the long run.
We have seen this before. The first for-profit site along these lines in Maryland was PolitickerMD. Part of a network of state-specific political blogs owned by New Jersey millionaire (and new Ivanka Trump husband) Jared Kushner, PolitickerMD had one paid editor and one paid reporter who roamed the state looking for tidbits. And that was what the output of the site resembled: little bits of information with minimal context and no perspective. The site folded, along with most of its counterparts in other states, more than a year ago.
Next came Maryland Commons, a political news and opinion site founded by retired charity fundraiser Neil Didrikson in late 2008. Didrikson obtained a grant, produced a couple independent articles a week, sometimes hired freelancers to write with him, and supplemented that with daily aggregation. Sound familiar? Didrikson told your author last spring that his backers believed the site had a shot at breaking even if it received 10,000 visits per month. Its high point was 3,000. The site shut down in August.
How difficult is it to make money from an online news-politics-aggregation business model? Consider the experience of Dan Silverman, the founder of D.C.’s Prince of Petworth blog. Silverman created the site in 2003 to chronicle the District’s Petworth neighborhood and his coverage spread to other areas in the city. It is now one of D.C.’s most popular blogs, and that is saying something because D.C.’s youth-skewed demographics make it a FAR more blog-addicted jurisdiction than Maryland. Silverman quit his day job, which paid him nearly six figures, in September to blog full-time. Silverman admitted to taking a “huge salary cut” and makes just enough money to pay his bills.
If any blogger can stay above water with no day job, it should be Silverman. His site demands little or no overhead cost and it is incredibly popular. Silverman told the Examiner that his site received “6,000 to 7,000 hits a day.” Now that could mean several things in terms of site traffic. A “hit” is a very broad definition of traffic that is seldom used directly, but is often used colloquially to mean page views or site visits. Silverman’s statistic counter, Sitemeter, does not track hits at all. So how much traffic is Silverman really getting?
Since January, MPW, which has been the most-visited political blog in Maryland every month since November 2008, has averaged around 1,100-1,300 daily weekday visits and 2,000-2,500 daily weekday page views. That equates to roughly 30,000 monthly visits and 60,000 monthly page views. We surpass Maryland Commons’ estimated break-even point (which we believe was optimistically low) by a large margin. Depending on whether Silverman means visits or page views when he uses the term “hits,” he could be getting three to six times our traffic. That is far behind DCist, the King of D.C. blogs, but would blow away any blog in Maryland. And yet Silverman makes barely enough money to pay his bills.
It would take many, many years for any Maryland political blog to equal the success of the Prince of Petworth, which has been around a long time, produces tons of original content, has a broad geographic reach and operates near the core of D.C.’s urban culture. That means the economics of operating a solvent site with paid staff in Maryland using a news-politics-aggregation business model are nearly impossible at the moment. That is doubly compounded by a business plan calling for 50(!!) employees as proposed by Politico. And it is further compounded by the fact that a number of sites are attempting to do virtually the same thing, at the same time, with little or no audience history and no record of making a profit.
And so who will be the Sole Survivor? Whoever is willing to lose the most money is likely to last the longest. Anybody want a piece of that action?
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Is Center Maryland Open for Business? (Updated)
Center Maryland, the “news” website established by a group of Democratic campaign contributors and former government officials, is showing signs of being anything but a news website. In fact, the site is starting to look like a servant of some of its founders’ clients.
To understand Center Maryland, you have to first understand the business interests of some of its founders. Steve Kearney (a former employee of Governor O’Malley) and Damian O’Doherty (a former employee of Baltimore County Executive Jim Smith) are principals of Kearney O’Doherty Public Affairs LLC (KO), a political consulting firm based in Baltimore. And while Center Maryland’s website does not disclose this fact, fellow founder and former Baltimore Sun editor Howard Libit is also a KO employee.
KO discloses very little about itself on its website, but its officials are slightly more open on their Linkedin profiles. Kearney says:KO Public Affairs is a strategic communications firm that helps clients win where business, government, politics and media meet. The firm’s clients include leading corporations and associations in the real estate, energy, health care, technology, transportation, retail and sports/entertainment industries.
O’Doherty says:O’Doherty has built a high-profile lobbying and public affairs practice, counseling clients on matters relating to state and local government and development.
And Libit says he is:Working with corporate clients who are involved with government and political activities.
Kearney, O’Doherty and Libit are three of Center Maryland’s six founders, alongside three business owners. One of them, Martin Knott, owns a construction company. O’Doherty was a registered lobbyist for over sixteen months from 2006 through 2008. During that time, he was paid $251,121 by fourteen clients in the power, real estate/development, traffic camera and other industries.
KO does not disclose any lobbying activity, but § 15-701 of the state code could conceivably be interpreted to cover its operation of Center Maryland, which is after all a vehicle for communicating with state office holders, except for one thing: the code exempts “actions of a member of the news media, to the extent the actions are in the ordinary course of gathering and disseminating news or making editorial comment to the general public” from the definition of lobbying subject to disclosure.
The site declares in its banner that it runs “the news you need, straight down the middle.” Its founders want us to believe that its product is objective news.
But true to Kearney O’Doherty’s business interests, Center Maryland has been a playground for the real estate, development and power industries – all represented by KO. Consider the following:
1. Queen Anne’s Federal Project
On January 25, Center Maryland ran an opinion by “Clayton A. Mitchell, Esquire” of Stevensville favoring a federal project in Queen Anne’s County without disclosing any information about him. Mitchell is the son of former House Speaker R. Clayton Mitchell Jr. and once worked for a lawyer who had been disbarred for bribery. He is an Eastern Shore land use lawyer. While the project supported by Mitchell is owned by the federal government, it may very well create development opportunities for nearby private land owners. Whether Mitchell stands to enjoy any financial gain from the project is unknown as Center Maryland did not elaborate on his role. After posting Mitchell’s opinion, Center Maryland followed up with coverage of a poll conducted for the “Eastern Shore Leadership Council” describing public support for the project and a video promoting it. Post reporter Aaron Davis presented a more balanced view of the development. Does Kearney O’Doherty represent any clients who are involved with this project?
2. Jobs vs. the Bay
On January 25, Center Maryland ran the results of another poll claiming that Marylanders favored job creation even if it meant polluting the Chesapeake Bay. The poll was financed by the Maryland State Builders Association and Center Maryland did not describe any countervailing views of it in its coverage.
3. Stormwater Regulations
Center Maryland has paid significant attention to the prospect of new stormwater regulation in Maryland. The site’s posts about the issue have been a mix of skeptical articles by former Washington Times reporter Tom LoBianco and freelancer Julie Turkewitz and opponent commentary by the Maryland State Builders Association (again). After weeks of this, the site finally allowed guest posts by environmentalist groups before the state builders struck back. Center Maryland’s “coverage” of this issue looks like little more than an attempt to prevent Kearney O’Doherty’s clients from being burdened by the costs of new regulation.
4. Electricity Competition
On February 19th, Center Maryland put up a poll of Marylanders indicating significant support for electricity competition. (Incidentally, we agree with that view.) The post states, “Disclosure: Several founders of Center Maryland were involved in commissioning the poll and work with the coalition on electricity issues.” This is raw evidence that the site is being used to spread information paid for by Kearney O’Doherty’s clients.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion. This blog has never pretended to be an objective endeavor and has run many guest posts. And we have disclosed our affiliations again and again and again and again.
The difference with Center Maryland is the undisclosed role of corporate money and the deceptive claim of providing objective news. Center Maryland founders Steve Kearney, Damian O’Doherty and Howard Libit make their living representing clients “where business, government, politics and media meet.” The nexus between the founders’ business interests and Center Maryland’s coverage suggests that the site allows those industries that hire Kearney O’Doherty to spread their viewpoints disguised as “the news you need, straight down the middle.” KO’s clients would no doubt value a readership of 5,000 (which Center Maryland claimed even before the site launched) as an audience for their arguments. If Center Maryland’s founders want the site to be taken seriously, they must disclose KO’s client list and indicate whether they work for customers in the industries discussed by every article. Otherwise, the site should be regarded as a mere extension of the offline services KO provides to their clients.
Update: Red Maryland’s Mark Newgent asked Center Maryland’s Howard Libit whether the site was publishing material connected to KO’s clients. Libit did not respond.
Monday, March 01, 2010
Transactions Worth Noting, Part One (Updated)
Buried in the new contribution reports are little nuggets. Some may be gold, some may be zirconium and some may be scrap metal. Read the following and you can decide.
County Executive Ike Leggett contributed $1,500 to District 4 County Council candidate Nancy Navarro on 5/12/09 after endorsing Ben Kramer in the 2009 special election primary. Navarro also received $2,000 from Governor Martin O’Malley on 5/13/09 and $2,000 from Lieutenant Governor Anthony Brown on 7/8/09. Navarro was the only MoCo politician to whom the Governor and the Lieutenant Governor contributed last year. Navarro’s opponent in the general election was anti-tax activist Robin Ficker, a man whom neither the County Executive nor the Governor apparently wanted to see holding elected office.
District 17 Senate challenger Cheryl Kagan received a total of $4,000 from the MoCo Career Fire Fighters PAC, but returned $1,000 to comply with her self-imposed “Clean Seventeen” pledge. That pledge restricts Kagan to a maximum contribution level of half the legal limit. The Fire Fighters are the only institutional supporter of Kagan of whom we are aware.
Senator Nancy King (D-39) received two $1,000 checks from Senate President Mike “Big Daddy” Miller on 6/1/09 and 12/28/09. Miller also gave $1,000 to Senator Rich Madaleno (D-18) and another $1,000 to Senator Mike Lenett (D-19).
District 19 Delegate candidate Sam “Hunk of the Hill” Arora received an incredible 666 individual contributions for $64,460. One of those contributors was former DNC Chair and Virginia Governor candidate Terry McAuliffe, who gave Arora $1,000 on 11/22/09. Only 30% of Arora’s contributions came from Maryland. That figure excludes his $45,000 loan to himself.
Council Member Valerie Ervin gave $150 to occasional ally and occasional adversary Council Member Marc Elrich on 12/7/09. Elrich also received contributions from fellow Council Members Roger Berliner ($2,000 on 1/11/10), Duchy Trachtenberg ($1,000 on 1/11/10) and Phil Andrews ($150 on 1/12/10) and District 39 Delegate Saqib Ali ($200 on 10/21/09).
Former County Executive Doug Duncan spent $39.86 on 7/28/09 for “domain registration.” The check went to former Duncan staffer Jerry “Darth Vader” Pasternak. Duncan contributed $2,000 to Comptroller Peter Franchot, $1,000 to at-large County Council candidate Becky Wagner and $1,000 to District 19 Delegate candidate and former MCEA President Bonnie Cullison, all on 1/12/10.
Former District 39 Senator Patrick J. Hogan made 20 contributions from his old campaign account for $7,010 last year. The biggest recipients were Governor O’Malley (two $1,000 checks plus a $500 check), Big Daddy ($1,000) and Speaker Mike Busch (two $500 checks).
Potomac resident Patrick Lacefield, County Executive Ike Leggett’s spokesman, made two contributions in the last reporting year to Council Member George Leventhal ($100 on 11/29/09) and District 14 Delegate Anne Kaiser ($25 on 12/1/09). Lacefield does not live in Kaiser’s district.
Marylandreporter.com publisher Len Lazarick gave $60 to the Republican State Central Committee of Maryland on 6/8/09. This follows other contributions of $30 (on 4/24/03) and $35 (on 5/7/04) to the Howard County Republican Central Committee and $40 to the Baltimore County Republican Central Committee on 5/30/06. We traced Marylandreporter.com’s funding to right-wing groups last year. The founders of competitor Center Maryland, on the other hand, have contributed $54,802 to state and local politicians over the last ten years, with 92% of the money going to Democrats. Both sites claim to be sources of objective news.
More transactions tomorrow!
Update: Len Lazarick says that his “contributions” to the GOP were actually meal reimbursements when he was covering their events. We appreciate Lazarick’s discussion of the issue. Truthfully, we are much more interested in why Center Maryland founder Howard Libit wrote a $1,000 check to Doug Gansler on the very day that Center Maryland began operations.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Kurtz on Post vs. MCEA
Long-time Gazette columnist and current Center Maryland columnist Josh Kurtz breaks down the Post’s war on MCEA today. Unlike your author, Kurtz is not a labor movement lifer. Kurtz notes the Post’s own turbulent labor history and concludes:
So really, the Post is just reverting to type here. And with another political season upon us, as it tries to reassert its power over Montgomery County elections, the newspaper’s strategy seems pretty clear: to tear down the institution it sees as its biggest rival for winning the hearts and minds of county voters.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Straight Down the Middle?
Recently, Red Maryland’s Mark Newgent went after the new political website Center Maryland for advertising itself as “straight down the middle” when some of its founders are former employees of Governor O’Malley. As it turns out, Newgent’s argument may have more validity than even he believed.
Here are the state and local political contributions of the site’s six founders. 
Here are the largest checks written by the founders.
Otis Rolley to Martin O’Malley, 6/20/05: $3,960
Damian O’Doherty to Martin O’Malley, 10/21/07: $3,800
Martin Knott to Jim Smith, 1/13/09: $3,000
Martin Knott to Ken Ulman, 1/9/09: $3,000
Martin Knott to Martin O’Malley, 2/12/05: $2,500
We have no problem with Democrats starting political websites. What do you think MPW is? But when Center Maryland’s founders give 92% of their political contributions to Democrats (including 39% to O’Malley), their claim that they are printing “the news you need straight down the middle” is hard to believe. And it’s not as if these are old contributions that long predated the creation of the site. The six founders have given $10,825 to Democrats and nothing to Republicans since the start of 2009. Former Baltimore Sun reporter and editor Howard Libit, one of Center Maryland’s founders, wrote a $1,000 check to Democratic Attorney General Doug Gansler on 1/11/10, the same day that the site went live.
Our message to Center Maryland is the same as it is to Marylandreporter.com: write whatever you wish, but don’t pretend to be something that you are not.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Conservative Blogger Takes on Center Maryland
Red Maryland blogger Mark Newgent has called out the new political website Center Maryland for misrepresenting its purpose and mission. Let us shock the entire state’s blogosphere with this simple statement: Newgent has a point.
Center Maryland markets itself as “a new nonprofit media outlet that highlights issues of real importance to job creation and economic growth” and says it provides, “the news you need, straight down the middle.” But Newgent notes that the site’s founders include former officials in the administrations of Baltimore Mayor and Governor Martin O’Malley, Baltimore County Executive Jim Smith and soon-to-be former Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon. Despite the obvious Democratic Party affiliations of the site’s backers, Center Maryland tells its readers that it is a “centrist, pro-business voice.” And yet, the website was founded in part by former employees of Governor O’Malley during the year of his re-election campaign.
Maryland Politics Watch and Red Maryland share a common virtue: everyone knows who we are and what we believe. MPW is a progressive blog. How could it be anything different when your author is a labor movement lifer and co-author Marc Korman is a member of the Montgomery County Democratic Central Committee? Red Maryland is a conservative blog. Its authors are enthusiastic right-wing activists. Some of them are columnists who have been published in the mainstream media while others have run for office as Republicans. No one comes to MPW to read odes to the free market, and no one goes to Red Maryland to read paeans to socialized medicine. Neither blog pretends to be something that it is not.
Newgent’s essay and our work on Marylandreporter.com point to a growing problem with new media: readers cannot be sure of the agenda being promoted by these new websites. Is it news? Is it opinion? Can it be trusted? Is there an angle to it? Where is the money coming from? How are readers supposed to trust what they are reading?
We do not have the answers any more than you do. But we thank Mark Newgent, and Red Maryland, for raising the questions.
