The Fifth Column: First Year In Review - The Stats

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The Fifth Column: First Year In Review - The Commentary will be posted tommorrow.

The State of the Blog

I am very happy with the progress of the blog. It has been 9 months since I created The Fifth Column, two months of that was the development and testing stage, 7 months with actual new blog posts and the last two months with posts every weekday.

From April 1 to October 31 there have been 1852 visits by 1293 unique visitors with 2832 page views. The blog took its biggest jump in traffic when I started posting daily during the week. Being “syndicated” on Progressive Bloggers and Blogging Dippers also helped a lot.

This may not be a lot by the standards of the big mainstream blogs but I certainly feel that it is enough to make the effort worthwhile, especially as I do appear to be getting some regular visitors to the blog. I am also very pleased to be receiving votes on Progressive Bloggers, yesterday’s blog receiving 5 votes. I look forward to growing the blog further.

I am however disappointed in the low number of comments being posted, one of the main goals of the blog being to initiate discussion. So if you do have any general comments on The Fifth Column please post them in response to this blog posting, and please let me know if you are a regular reader of The Fifth Column.

On Blogging

It seems like I have always wanted to have a blog even before there were blogs.

When I attended Laurentian University I was active on the student newspaper, Lambda, and had a regular column, the Fifth Column, for which my blog is named.

My first personal computer was an Osborne 1 and I remember watching the dots go by as I downloaded files from computer Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) . My first Internet experience was with the Freeport based National Capital Freenet and I was one of the NCFs first information providers and one of the first NCF information providers to go to HTML web format with the Bridlewood Electromagnetic Fields (EMFs) Information Service.

My political perspective was formed, as with many people, during my university years where I studied Political Science and was involved in student politics as well as the New Democratic Party. When I moved to Ottawa to work for the House of Commons (indexing the House of Commons Debates and Committee Proceedings), I continued my involvement with the NDP. After moving to Kanata, I became involved in municipal politics as well, in particular the Bridlewood Residents Hydro Line Committee. Since then I have stepped back from active political involvement but remain an interested observer.

Upon retirement it seemed natural to bring my interest in the Internet, politics and journalism together in a blog. My blog is still young and struggling to find it’s place. I do not think I have reached my goal of providing the type of writing that I think I am capable of - original and thought provoking. Finding a distinctive style, beyond avoiding using question marks (as my daughter informs me I do), is another challenge.

I think my blog is going to find it’s place somewhere between a personal blog and a political blog. As an avid outdoors person, hiker, mountain biker, kayaker and cross county skier, I am more than just a “political animal”

I have recently disciplined myself into writing something every weekday. I wonder if this is hampering my writing of longer more thoughtful blog entries, but then if I cannot think of at least one interesting thing to say each day should I really be doing this. Blogging daily has certainly increased the readership of my blog which encourages me to spend more time researching and writing this blog..

Let me know what you think of the Fifth Column. I look forward to seeing how it evolves