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, November 09, 2010
Atterbeary Linked to Ehrlich Voter Suppression Robocaller
The Baltimore Sun has reported that former District 18 House candidate Vanessa Atterbeary employed Julius Henson, the campaign operative who was responsible for voter suppression robocalls for Bob Ehrlich in Baltimore. The Sun says Henson has “a history of rough-and-tumble campaign tactics” and links him to what happened this summer in District 18.
The Sun refers to Vanessa Atterbeary’s misleading mailer in which she inaccurately claimed to have the support of several elected officials. We reprint an excerpt from her mailer below.
Six of these officials denied endorsing Atterbeary or permitting their images to be used in her literature. None of these officials confirmed their support for her. Atterbeary herself blamed a “printing error” and said, “That should not have gone out.” MPW first commented on the mailer on August 30. Atterbeary paid Universal Elections, one of Henson’s companies that later made the suppression robocalls, $19,000 for “direct mailing by mail house” on August 26.
The mailer was not the only noteworthy event during the primary. Atterbeary’s campaign made illegal robocalls, covered the district with illegal signs as early as May, received a warning from the Town of Kensington and damaged voters’ cars. During this period of time, Atterbeary paid Henson’s companies – Universal Elections and Politics Today Inc. – $79,489.99. Those payments accounted for 62% of her total campaign spending through 8/27/10.
She may have paid Henson even more but her pre-general election campaign finance report is more than two weeks overdue.
Disclosure: The author is the Treasurer of the District 18 Democratic Team.
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.
Monday, May 10, 2010
The MSM: Mouthpieces of the State Democrats
The state Democrats are totally winning the negative propaganda war in the Maryland Governor’s race and their mouthpieces are none other than the “objective” mainstream media (MSM). Here’s why.
The easiest thing to cover in politics is the horse race. It involves no research or perspective. There is little work. The candidates write the stories for the journalists, who merely transcribe them. There is non-stop content. Minimal writing skills are required. That is playing out in Maryland right now. And the real author of much of the state’s political coverage is effectively the Maryland Democratic Party.
Just look at what has been written over the last three months. When the Dems complained to the FCC about Bob Ehrlich’s on-air promotion of a client, the Post and Sun carried it immediately. When the Dems complained to the State Board of Elections about Ehrlich’s use of his law firm employees for campaign purposes, the Sun ran it on the same day and followed up soon after. When the Dems protested Ehrlich’s radio show, the Post picked it up. And when the Dems pointed to a trailer about a movie on disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff that included one quick snapshot of Abramoff and Ehrlich, the Post and Sun jumped on it. Forget the fact that Ehrlich was never charged, or even named as an unindicted co-conspirator, in the corruption scandal.
None of this has anything to do with the candidates’ records or what either of them would do in the next term. Ironically, when the Post grumbled that the Governor’s race pitted “Mr. Duck vs. Mr. Dodge,” they missed the obvious point that the MSM’s fixation with horse race coverage was actually allowing the candidates to run substance-free campaigns. For example, has any reporter really pressed Ehrlich on how he would pay down the state budget deficit while cutting the sales tax? Has any reporter really pressed Martin O’Malley on how he would pay down the deficit without a big tax hike? Has anyone in the MSM asked either candidate how he would pay for needed transportation projects? And has anyone in the MSM pressed either candidate to lay out a governing vision for the next four years? Horse race coverage is lots of fun and has its place, but should it be an outright substitute for factual examination of the candidates’ records and positions?
Our intention is not to criticize the state Democrats. They are running an aggressive, humorous and wicked propaganda operation against Ehrlich – which is, after all, their job. The state Republicans have a broken party apparatus with no money, little staff and no creativity, so it is their own fault that they are getting outplayed by the Dems. The best anti-O’Malley propaganda appears on blogs like Red Maryland, but since they are merely blogs, they are ignored by MSM reporters who concentrate only on “official” sources like the state parties. Advantage: Democrats. Don’t the reporters know they are getting used?
And so few pieces like Gazette reporter Sean Sedam’s careful look at the race - which includes a genuine examination of some aspects of the candidates’ records – have appeared in either the Post or the Sun. For the most part, both papers are too busy focusing on the state Dems’ latest pokes at Ehrlich to care about anything substantive. This is a great victory for Martin O’Malley and his party, but it is a great loss for real journalism.
Friday, January 01, 2010
Best and Worst of State and Local Political Media, 2009
List-mania is alive and well in Maryland and everywhere else, as everyone and their Aunt Ethel are issuing lists left and right. But no one else is offering a list like this: the best and worst of state and local political media over the past year.
Best Mainstream Media (MSM) Political Reporter
We still miss the Gazette’s Janel Davis and the Examiner’s Kathleen Miller, both of whom are no longer covering local politics. But we are going with Post reporter John Wagner, who has been following Annapolis for five years. Wagner gives you the meat and potatoes of state political reporting – who, what, when, where and why. Other reporters may throw a few morsels on the plate, but statehouse political coverage starts with the steady, objective writing provided by Wagner.
Runner-up: The Examiner’s Alan Suderman, who delights in uncovering misbehavior in local government. Suderman picked up one of the best quotes of the year from County Executive spokesman Patrick Lacefield, who responded to a question about a county-funded $25,000 staff retreat by sputtering, “Are you really asking me that question?”
Best New MSM Political Reporter
The Post’s Jonathan Mummolo, who has substantially improved the paper’s reporting on Prince George’s County politics. Now all the Post has to do is find five more Mummolos and they might have a shot at doing that county justice.
Best MSM Column
This one is easy: Blair Lee’s epic and touching column on his old foe, former Baltimore Mayor and Governor William Donald Schaefer. We know that some of you liberals don’t agree with Lee, but you really should read his work because of his unequaled LONG memory of state politics.
Runner-up: Barry Rascovar’s comparison of Governor O’Malley to Dracula.
Worst MSM Columns
Most material appearing on the Sun’s Second Opinion site, which has five contributors and just ten Google subscribers (one of whom is your author). Most of this stuff is pure opinion without additional original research. The Sun’s editors need to understand what the best bloggers already know: no one cares what your opinions are! Readers primarily want new information. This experiment by the Sun is failing because almost no one is interested.
Best Move by the MSM
Last summer, the Post’s Maryland Moment blog was moribund and rarely publishing new content. But Aaron Davis turned the blog around by creating First Click, possibly the most thorough daily aggregator of state and local political stories in Maryland. The success of First Click is that it creates the illusion that the Post is offering more content by linking to everyone else’s work when the Post is actually producing less content in-house. But site visits are site visits, and lots of first clicks are going to Davis’s picks.
Runner-up: The Sun editors chose to let go of transportation reporter Mike Dresser’s leash and he mutated into “Baltimore Guy,” the ranting MoCo basher who excoriates the I-270 project and protects the rest of the state from our alleged arrogance. Few MoCo insiders will ever see Dresser as an “objective” reporter again, but that is beside the point. Dresser’s anti-MoCo screeds are refreshingly honest and should warn our politicians about how the rest of the state feels about us. One of our favorite spies paid Baltimore Guy the ultimate compliment recently, fuming, “I HATE Mike Dresser.” Mike, it just doesn’t get any better than that!
Worst Move by the MSM
Hands down, the Washington Post’s colossal Boy King scandal. The Post’s hiring of a non-resident, crazed, ignorant intern to write local editorials totally destroyed its credibility with Maryland’s political community. Even worse, the Post continued to let the Boy King run amok for five months(!) after we broke the story, revealing its utter contempt for Maryland readers.
Runner-up #1: The Sentinel’s hiring of Republican activist Glynis Kazanjian as a “reporter” while overlooking her continuing advocacy for the GOP.
Runner-up #2: Massive turnover at the Post and the Gazette.
Runner-up #3: The MSM’s uncritical, pack-animal coverage of the Dana Beyer-Duchy Trachtenberg-KGB story. None of them bothered to look into whether Beyer’s allegations had any credibility at all. The MSM needs to remember that part of its job is to investigate allegations, not merely transcribe them.
Best New Blog
Yes, we know that Darkness Rising started in December 2008, but the blog did not gain recognition until last year. Former Ehrlich hatchet man Joe “Prince of Darkness” Steffen is hilarious, more than slightly deranged and better connected to the GOP establishment than any other blogger in the state. The only problem is that he just doesn’t post often enough. Everybody should put aside their preconceptions, visit this blog at least once a week and laugh along with the rest of us.
Runner-up: Nobody. There are actually fewer good political blogs in Maryland today than there were in 2006.
Best Move by Online Media/Blogs
Annapolis Capital Punishment author Paul Foer changed the course of that city’s mayoral election with his dynamite scoop about Democratic nominee Zina Pierre’s legal problems. The MSM exploded without mercy and Pierre had no choice but to bail. Few if any blog posts have ever had a bigger impact on Free State local politics than this one.
Runner-up: MPW contributor Paul Gordon’s scoop on MTA spying, which generated successful pressure from the Sun’s Mike Dresser to abandon the practice.
Worst Move by Online Media/Blogs
Marylandreporter.com’s failure to acknowledge its conservative funding. Look guys, the secret is out. Why not admit that your money is coming from far right-wing organizations but say that you are still trying to be objective? Ignoring our research just raises even more questions.
Runner-up: The failure of many blogs to provide publicly-available site visit statistics. Come on bloggers, what are you hiding? Everybody knows that most blogs have almost no readers so you may as well fess up.
Best Politician at Driving the Media
Has anybody ever been better at this than Delegate Saqib Ali (D-39)? Whether it’s hustling the MSM for glowing editorials on his Legislative Sunshine bill, arranging for stacks of letters to the Gazette targeting potential primary opponent Senator Nancy King, writing four(!) anti-King guest blogs or directing his legions of Facebook friends to read articles about him and vote for him in online polls, Ali does it all. He makes no distinction between media formats. If anything - paper, radio or web-based - is discussing state politics, Saqib Ali is on it like butter on toast.
Runner-up: No one, because nobody else is on Ali’s level. Here’s a quick idea for how Ali could raise money: he should hold a workshop for candidates about how to deal with both old and new media, as well as social networking sites, and charge $500 attendance fees. Every smart politician in the state would ante up and Ali would have more money than E.J. Pipkin.
Worst Politician at Driving the Media
First, the state prosecutor’s gift card theft indictment made Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon look like a Charm City Marie Antoinette. Then she refused to testify at her trial and cut off most comments to the media, which just compounded her problems. In the wake of her conviction, she desperately clings to power in a state of complete denial. The narrative of her character over the past year, that of a haughty and selfish politician, was eagerly promoted by the media but was in fact fashioned by the mayor herself.
Runner-up: Former Montgomery County Executive Doug Duncan built a bully pulpit that has been lost in the basement by his successor, Ike Leggett. Leggett is an immensely intelligent and likable man who could wrap local reporters around his finger if he gave them access. Instead, he has taken a back seat to the Council Presidents – especially Phil Andrews - who are well served by able press officer Neil Greenberger. No executive should ever be overshadowed by a legislative leader unless such leader is named Mike Miller.
So that’s 2009. How well will the media perform in 2010? We’ll find out in a year!
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Baltimore Sun's Mike Dresser on "Political Pulse" on Channel 16 TV
Mike Dresser, the transportation reporter for the Baltimore Sun and the author of the "Getting There" blog in the Sun will be on the "Political Pulse" political talk show on:
Thurs, October 15th at 9:00 p.m.;
Fri-Sun, October 16th-18th at 6:00 p.m.; and
Tues, October 20th at 9:30 p.m.
Topics that will be discussed include:
(1) Whether Maryland can expect to get funding at the federal level for both the Purple Line (in Montgomery/Prince George Counties) and the Red Line (in Baltimore City) which were recently recommended by Governor O'Malley; (2) the debate over whether I-270 should be widened by two lanes in each direction at the estimated cost of over $4 billion; (3) whether Montgomery County politicians are effective in meeting the County's transportation needs.
"Political Pulse" is on Channel 16 TV in Montgomery County.
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
Sun Suckers the Blogs
The Baltimore Sun is running an online poll to determine Maryland’s best blogs. Their goal? To sign up new subscribers and build ad revenues. Their suckers? Free State bloggers. And we have to hand it to them because it’s paying off.
The Sun has started a contest called “the Mobbies” (Maryland’s Outstanding Blogs). No, we are not supplying a link. They have nominated a large number of blogs in various categories for an award that consists of nothing more than a party and mention in a banner ad – in other words, a prize of fetid air in an empty box. And what have many bloggers done to gain such a boon? Why, beg their readers to comply!
Here’s one blogger urging his readers to vote for his “mobbie award as best blog of 09.” He even offers his readers a chance to throw pie in his face. Here’s another blogger telling his readers, “Embarrassing as it is to engage in self-promotion, I am soliciting your support… Should you not care to participate in this poll, offering me a job would be an acceptable alternative.” Here’s a conservative blogger who bashes the mainstream media (MSM) but writes, “...as long as the voting continues I have a shot, so why not take a moment and vote for me. Let’s see if I can at least finish ahead of all the liberal sites out there.” And most unfortunately, even Paul Foer of Annapolis Capital Punishment, who scooped the MSM on the Zina Pierre story, pants, “Don’t delay...vote for CP today!!!”
How bad is this? Mobbies voters must register with the Sun and are told to vote once a day from September 28 through October 9. So the newspaper gets new subscribers, new email addresses for spams and additional ad payments. What do the bloggers and their readers get? Something that is best cleaned out of horse stables.
Here is our message to the fleeing, looting overlord of the Sun. Maryland Politics Watch readers are the finest, smartest people in the Free State. They are not trollops, street-walkers, flesh-flashers or tramps and we will not be pimping them to the lascivious johns at your newspaper. Make no mistake – we are fans of individual MSM reporters. Our favorites include the Examiner’s scandal-addicted Alan Suderman, the Post’s eagle-eyed Miranda Spivack and old pro John Wagner and the noble, oppressed wage slaves at the Gazette. (As soon as they demand a union, we will do everything possible to help them!) We even like Baltimore Guy Mike Dresser, primarily because we enjoy a good argument. But we do not care, have never cared and will never care about what the reporter-cutting corporate bosses at MSM headquarters – or even worse, their marketing departments – think or say about this blog.
So if you happen by the Mobbies voting site and they allow it, please vote against us. We’ll take a box of hot air for that!
Monday, September 21, 2009
Independent Political Blogs Spank MSM
How do independent political blogs stack up against the mainstream media (MSM) “blogs” run by the Post and the Sun? Let’s have a look.
The MSM never releases their site visit counts, treating them like Cold War secrets. Many independent blogs have no problem with statistical exhibitionism, especially this one. So we need to use a proxy to compare them. One measure that’s easy to find is Google Reader subscribers. These folks get a variety of content through Google and the company releases subscriber counts for each content source. They may be a minority of blog readers, but data on their activity is available for blogs and other sites of all kinds.
Here’s how Maryland’s most prominent state and local political blogs, both independent and MSM, stack up in Google Reader subscribers at the moment:
MPW: 210
Maryland Politics (Sun): 108
Red Maryland: 98
Free State Politics: 67
Howard County: 67
O’Malley Watch: 66
Jay Hancock (Sun): 46
Legum's New Line: 46
Annapolis Capital Punishment: 44
Bay and Environment (Sun): 36
Maryland on My Mind: 35
Maryland Politics Today: 34
Maryland Politics (Post): 32
Baltimore Reporter: 25
Getting There (Sun): 24
Brian Griffiths: 20
Dan Rodricks (Sun): 19
PG Politics: 19
Darkness Rising: 17
Monoblogue: 14
Second Opinion (Sun): 7
Robert McCartney (Post): 3
Now let’s put these counts in perspective. The Maryland blogosphere is still in its infancy. DCist, the King of all DC blogs and part of the Gothamist LLC for-profit network, has 4,018 Google subscribers. Blog audiences still skew heavily urban and none of us in Maryland are any great shakes – yet.
But look at the stats above. Only one MSM political blog – the Sun’s Maryland Politics - is in the state’s top six. If you include MPW, the independent blogs above average 55 subscribers compared to the MSM’s average of 34. Even without MPW, the other independents average 43, still better than the MSM.
The MSM blogs are expensive to produce. First, they need at least one paid full-time writer. That individual could be making eighty grand a year or more in pay and benefits. Second, each of these blogs require some administrative and web staff time. Third, some of the MSM blogs actually have multiple writers. The Sun’s Second Opinion blog has five writers and seven Google subscribers! Meanwhile, the independents are producing their content for free and are actually getting more readers. How can any of this make sense to the corporate bean-counters at MSM headquarters?
The MSM would be better off reprinting the independents’ content and paying them a royalty.
