Where's The Lefty Traffic? (I Blame Dick Cheney)

Dick Cheney is as much to blame as General Petraeus for the baffling decline in lefty internet traffic noted at the DKos and flagged by Jim Gerhaghty, Mickey Kaus.and the InstaPundit.  No, seriously - my thought d'annee is that the Libby trial in February/March of 2007 created a disproportionate spike in lefty traffic, so that part of what looks like a decline is really a return to something like normalcy.  [I also blame the Sulzbergers in a LIGHTBULB below.]

Some background: a diarist at DKos noted that the traffic there peaked in August 2007 [five years of Kos traffic here].  I did a quick survey of lefty traffic at Atrios, Firedoglake [which came to fame on the Plame caper in 2005], MY DD, and Crooks and Liars; for comparison, I glanced at the traffic at righty sites Powerline, InstaPundit, and Michelle Malkin.  Obviously, specific sites may have gotten a boost from a redesign (IIRC, that would be Firedoglake and Ms. Malkin), but the general pattern is clear - the big lefty sites cited above peaked in April (Atrios, MY DD, C&L) or February (Firedoglake); the righty sites peaked in October (Instapundit, Ms. Malkin) or March (Powerline) but have been much less volatile.  This will be a great chart if it comes out properly, but what are the odds? [Here's how real men do it.  OK, or women, too.] [We aren't this good, but Cboldt is; that is his updated chart]:

Monthly Traffic in Millions

                    Peak        June      Dec
Atrios           Apr 3.5 MM    2.6 MM    2.2 MM
Firedoglake      Feb 2.9 MM    1.9 MM    1.9 MM
Crooks & Liars   Apr 6.2 MM    4.6 MM    4.0 MM
MY DD            Apr  .9 MM     .6 MM     .6 MM
   
Powerline        Mar 1.8 MM    1.6 MM    1.5 MM
InstaPundit      Oct 6.5 MM    5.5 MM    6.2 MM
Ms. Malkin       Oct 4.8 MM    3.6 MM    4.1 MM
   
JustOneMinute    Feb 600 K     150 K     110 K

As a bonus, here is a righty site closely associated with the Plame case which has now lapsed back into well-deserved obscurity:

JustOneMinute     Peak Feb 600 K; June 150 K; Dec 110 K

Now, no fair asking me what prompted the traffic surge on the right in October.  The Petraeus report was in September, so I welcome suggestions for the October surge, particularly of the head-slappingly obvious sort.

And lest we forget - Happy New Year's Eve.

LIGHTBULB!  The NY Times broke down the Times Select wall in September 2007 and surged as a result.  That had to re-direct more lefty traffic than right, yes?

MORE:  Kos has posted his monthly traffic over five years and here is one for the "Go Figure" file - he shows pretty much steady month by month growth to 2004.  However - the 2004 peak is October (OK, we'll guess run-up to the Nov election); the 2005 peak is also October (Run-up to the off-season election?  No way.); the 2006 peak is October, presumably due to the election; and the 2007 peak is also October.

Hmm - maybe it is not that October traffic is high in the off-years, it is that Thanksgiving and the year-end holidays depress November and December traffic.  That would explain the Oct 2007 peak for the righty sites as well.

Comments

[clarice]

Happy New Year to you TM. Glad you cracked thru the darkness.

[Rick Ballard]

Strip out all the "peak"s and the MM's and it might display correctly - you do know that you can paste a simple spreadsheet table into a photo editor and make a jpg, right?

Happy New Year!!

[Rick Ballard]

TM,

Here's your table (in stealable JPEG). Feel free.

[MayBee]

My guess for the decline of the left blogosphere is that neither Clinton nor Obama will engage with them.
Here they are, supposedly forming a movement, and yet the leading candidates seem to be doing just fine without them.
Even Elizabeth Edwards seems not to be posting at Kos anymore.

[Ann]

Interesting, the turn around in Iraq was in March 2007.

[Rick Ballard]

"Even Elizabeth Edwards seems not to be posting at Kos anymore."

The nursery remodel is taking up a lot of time...

I think you nailed it, MayBee - the run for the center has already begun. The Red Witch is going to try and hold the progs with a wink and a nod. They don't carry an ounce of weight in the swing states and just aren't worth the effort.

[Chuck]

Thanks Rick Ballard for "clearing up" the "feeble" attempt at posting a grid by TM.

:)

Happy New Year!

[Skip]

The funny thing for me is that MM's site redesign meant that, as a percentage of content, I read way less of what she writes, but probably have contributed to a higher hit rate. Because I do the vast majority of my blog reading from an RSS reader. And before the site redesign, I'd see new posts in the reader, but since her feed wasn't a full one, I'd open the main page up, and scan downwards reading about everything.

Now she'll have 10 new posts up, but I can't do that. So if 2 of them in particular look interesting I'll open each of those entries separately. So I read 20% of what I did before, but registered twice as much traffic. I don't _know_ that the site was designed so awfully to artificially boost the traffic numbers, but I do know that it has had that effect on me.

It's bad enough that if I hadn't been reading her site for quite awhile, I would likely have never added it to my feed list after the change. I have probably only 15 total feeds I read that are partial feeds, out of several hundred, and it's very rare for me to add any partial feeds now.

[Lou Minatti]

"My guess for the decline of the left blogosphere is that neither Clinton nor Obama will engage with them."

I think you are partially right. Atrios, Kos, etc. readers are the deranged, psychotic left, and Democrats (except for Krazy Kucinch) have figured out that the Nutroots are election poison.

I think the main reason is that Iraq seems to have turned around and most of the Bush administration team that was around in 2003 is gone. All the crazy Nutroot left have are some lame "Impeach" bleats.

Funny, how many Kos readers swore they were gonna move to Canada after the 2004 election? Yet they're still here. Go figure.

[MayBee]

The nursery remodel is taking up a lot of time...
Ha, Rick!

The Red Witch is going to try and hold the progs with a wink and a nod.

Yes. Remember how swooney they were over Bill's lunch with them? That seems to have bought them off for a good long while. He does have those blue eyes......

[Sara]

Awhile back O'Reilly did a real number on Kos and the ugliness of those who comment there. He was really on a tear over it. Every dem/lefty who came on his show that had ever posted at Kos got grilled about associating with that anti-semitic, bigoted and often racist/sexist site. They would sputter out some limp rationale. Since then, I've heard him bring up again a few times.

Some of those O'Reilly grilled actually did seem clueless and I'm sure some heads were rolling behind the scenes when they got off the show. It doesn't take long for the word to spread that something is too hot to handle. Rule #1 for politicians and politicos, protect your own butt first. And don't let someone else's dirt bring you down.

[Salamantis]

Could you add the data for two other rather iconic sites, Little Green Footballs and Captain's Quarters?

[Ann]

When are we going to stop the presses by not buying them:

How The NY Times Reports Iraq [Michael Ledeen] NRO

"It's a pattern. And it stinks." Ditto

[Syl]

As for the righty peak in Oct--note it was the beginning of October.

what happened at the very very end of September?

Press your memory buttons!

The Red Witch was humiliated in a debate and her downward spiral began!! That would get a lot of righties back on line!!

(Got me back!)

[Barry]

Happy New Year JOM!

[Jay Currie]

Now that Plame is over, I spend way too much time at http://climateaudit.com and so I'm betting the June decline migt just be an excellent proxy for "summer".

More generally, opinion fatigue may have kicked in on the left. Righty blogs tend to look for facts which bolster their positions; lefty blogs tend to express varying degrees of hysteria about the acts which undermine theirs. At a certain point outrage gets boring and horribly predictable.

Try this:

Righty blog: Kristol appointed to the OP/Ed section of the NY Times...who would have thunk it?

Lefty blog: I am just so @#$#@$@% angry that a @#$%^ J#w traitor Crystal has a @#$@^$ job: it's all BushitlerCheney's @#$#@% fault. War crimes now. Peak oil, Algore, die @#$%@ humans die. Fitz!

With facts you want to find out what happens next, with opinion you pretty much know already.

[Ralph L]

The do-nothing Dem Congress may also be depressing their numbers. Or it may be sheer exhaustion. Spewing vitriol must be tiring.

which has now lapsed back into well-deserved obscurity
Must be the commenters frightening new readers away.

[Major John]

Mr. M,

I do try to read as much as I can, it is this darn active duty getting in the way.

P.S. Anyone know a good ISP from Baghdad or Talill?

[Jim Christ]

well george
you've only got a year left
and some of us
are on pins and needles
waiting to see what
you may do to go out
with a bang

your cohorts covered up your
mysterious Air National Guard
records nicely. when
reporters interviewed
commanders, fellow officers
and other peers in your group
not one person
remembered you attending weekend meetings
or annual summer encampments
or anything what-so-ever.
guess you found that
cloak of invisibility, eh?

you took us to war and killed
a half million iraqis and
a few thousand of our own
to revenge your daddy
and grab the oil
that ran through your fingers
all over that desert
while the iraq infastructure
is more feeble than ever.
you got saddam but somehow
family friend bin laden traipses free.

you spent and spent and spent
everything from this to that
from special funds to
monies earmarked for
social security and
who knows what else
as all the while your family
and friends made more money
on oil in the last eight years
than they had in the last eighty.

go george go - you're on a roll.
you've clipped our inalienable rights
and taken away what the forefathers
tried to insure for all time
with chimp smile and cabinet
rife with treason and worse.

two fraudulent elections.
photographs of you holding books
upside down while pretending to read them.
pictures of you waving the satan sign
which you said was a texas longhorn
thing - BUT GEORGE -
you had it freaking backwards!
and your buddies,
a vice president who shot a friend
while hunting and didn't report it
until 24 hours later when the blood
tests wouldn't reflect the alcohol level
and the cover up would be guaranteed.
oh yeah, and that other cabinet member
who exposed CIA operatives in the
middle of a top secret mission.
probably tips of a few icebergs.

now you want to pass a bad joke
that will let you remain president
and suspend elections
if another 911 or other tragedy
"just happens" our way.

george, you're the strongest link
in the uglification of america.
your mindless puppet doings
have fucked us all for decades
without a clue.

[Sara]

Aaaaaaah, another sore loser gets in one last whine.

[Bruce]

A sore loser, right down to the ol' faked upside down book .jpg. It's got to be really frantic trying to avoid reality in that world...

[nichevo]

FYI this "Jim Christ" (yet!) is spamming all over - just saw this same piece at sisu on of all things a Kipling post.

As I said there, I only wish the Bush Administration would scoop him up and dump him somewhere not-nice, but as I also said there, the Bush Administration aren't the tyrants that such as "Jim Chrissakes" would like to pretend to believe.

[Math_Mage]

For at least the right-wing blog sites, I'm guessing most of it was driven by progress in the Iraq War. The graph of right-wing traffic is the inverse of the graph of civilian casualties in Iraq, which increased from the beginning of 2007, peaked in August and dramatically declined in September and October. Same basic trend for attacks on US troops (though it started earlier, it only got any MSM news starting in September/October)

Of course, this will spawn a theory from Kos that the right-wingers were all out killing Iraqi civilians and attacking US troops and were thus too busy to check their favorite blogs. (tongue firmly planted in cheek...I hope...)

As for the left-wing blogs, they were probably prolonging their drunken celebration of the Democrats' slim majority in the Senate and slightly larger one in the House. Then Pelosi and Reid didn't do what they wanted (end the war) and they got discouraged.

[Math_Mage]

"FYI this "Jim Christ" (yet!) is spamming all over - just saw this same piece at sisu on of all things a Kipling post."

Maybe you're both following Instapundit. :P

[Peg C.]

I think I know about the spike in righty blog Oct. traffic (I don't care a whit about traffic spikes or dips in the fever swamps): Harry Reid's idiotic letter, Rush's fabulous exploitation of same into several million$ to the children of fallen Marines and LEOs, and much discussion of all of the above. Come on, folks! This was so obvious.

[TallDave]

It's Iraq. The bad war news drove their traffic; leftists wanted somewhere to feel good about being against the war.

When the war wasn't going well, it was easy to be against the war; many mainstream leftists even said our troops were the problem. Now that it's clear that not only are our troops the best thing going for Iraq right now, but they may actually pull off Bush's crazy dream of turning Saddam's blood-soaked dictatorship of maiming and torture and rape rooms and nerve gas attacks into something resembling a functioning liberal democracy... well, it's just too much cognitive dissonance to wrap their heads around.

It's like when a football team starts losing; fewer fans show up.

[SlimGuy]

Kos had a post of his month by month traffic since day one, but by his own figures he is down about 5 million a month compared to last year blaming the early parts of the year as being non election era.  But even after the campaigns started he mostly ends up a couple of million down from last year.

[SlimGuy]

Kos had a post of his month by month traffic since day one, but by his own figures he is down about 5 million a month compared to last year blaming the early parts of the year as being non election era.  But even after the campaigns started he mostly ends up a couple of million down from last year.

[SlimGuy]

Over all he lost about 1/4 of his traffic from a year ago down to around 15 million a month and as much as 10 million down from his 2005 numbers for some months.

Looks like Oct 2005 was where he peaked. With another blip for Oct/Nov 2006.

[SlimGuy]

From what I am seeing Kos at least seems to take a hit during the summer months when people have other things to do and picks up when the users head back to college or school.

[SlimGuy]

October surge....hmmm a lot of traffic was generated around the Gonzales issue and new AG hearings on politically oriented sites I follow.

[SlimGuy]

SCHIP was hot traffic in the middle of October the AG stuff started later.

[SlimGuy]

FISA was also an issue were hot on in that time frame from posts in my RSS reader from back then.

[M. Simon]

Jay Currie | December 30, 2007 at 11:49 PM,

Love your stuff at Climate Audit.

Happy New Year to all the folks at JOM and to our honored host.

[M. Simon]

BTW,

I was doing a lot on the Summer War in Lebanon in '06 and my traffic peaked at 1,000 to 1,500 hits a day. Lots of comments. When the war was over I reverted to my usual 300 to 500 hits a day (Sitemeter stats) and way fewer comments.

The meme "if it bleeds it leads" is common wisdom for a reason. Bad news drives traffic.

[Tom Maguire]

Could you add the data for two other rather iconic sites, Little Green Footballs and Captain's Quarters?

Anyone can play, just get me the data - I couldn't find the sitemeter at LGF, and the Captain's seems not to be visible to the public.

But while you are running that down, I had no luck with Talking Points Memo or Raw Story, either - please let me know how that works out. Traffic stats for The Huffington Post and Drudge would also be useful, thanks.

[cboldt]

A couple other handy HTML tools for getting text to line up, besides making a graphic file, e.g., a .jpg, are the <pre>, </pre> pair; and the <tt>, </tt> pair.

                    Peak        June      Dec
Atrios           Apr 3.5 MM    2.6 MM    2.2 MM
Firedoglake      Feb 2.9 MM    1.9 MM    1.9 MM
Crooks & Liars   Apr 6.2 MM    4.6 MM    4.0 MM
MY DD            Apr  .9 MM     .6 MM     .6 MM
   
Powerline        Mar 1.8 MM    1.6 MM    1.5 MM
InstaPundit      Oct 6.5 MM    5.5 MM    6.2 MM
Ms. Malkin       Oct 4.8 MM    3.6 MM    4.1 MM
   
JustOneMinute    Feb 600 K     150 K     110 K

[Walter]

Happy New Year, Tom!

And Kwanzaa!

Same to the rest of y'all.

On another topic, once again I'm not sure whether to be pleased or concerned. My pre-schooler had an eight-day unit on Hanukkah, six days on Christmas, and will cover Kwanzaa on the second. But, he corrected me when I discussed 'Christmas' break: "It's Winter break, Dad!"

Same school district, my first-grader gets none of it.

So, I'm generally pleased by the early coverage of comparative religion (I didn't get that until high school). I'm somewhat concerned about the official recognition of Christmas as a Northern European pagan holiday. (How long before kids make the connection with the astronomy unit covering when the 'tilt of the Earth's axis is oriented directly away from the Sun'?) And I'm a bit confused as to why a 40-year-old immigrant 'tradition' gets equal time with somewhat more respectable religions.

It's not like Sammy Davis, Jr. or Clarence Thomas are potted plants, y'know--the older religions are inclusive. Maybe some people (not me!) feel that descendents of (extremely reluctant) African immigrants feel excluded by all the pine trees, holly branches, and such that are necessarily part of the Solstice Celebration.

[Jane]

I've never even heard on anyone celebrating Kwanzaa. What exactly does it involve?

[Walter]

Jane,

I don't really know--I'm roughly as old as the 'holiday', so I've never celebrated it myself. Wiki has an article on it, and if you'd like, I could ask my eager student to make a guest comment about the practice in practice.

[Walter]

Maybe it's just jealosy--We did Columbus day when I was a kid, but not once, even in high school, did we recreate Oktoberfest.

(At a school-sanctioned event, anyway.)

[Jane]

Has anyone been following the story at Blackfive about the lawyer who keyed the car of a marine the night before he was set to deploy?

(link is under my name)

Protein Wisdom and Patterico have picked up on it. I don't know if we have any Chicago lawyers here, but we have people with big contacts so I thought we should help in any way we can.

[Jane]

Walter,

Does your student celebrate Kwanzaa? Does he also celebrate Christmas? I always thought Kwanzaa was a holiday we imported to appease Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. I've never heard of any family that has it as it's tradition.

[Walter]

Details Wednesday afternoon...

I suspect, like Hannukah and Christmas, there will be decorations, readings, and crafts.

Hmmm. To be consistent must I also be concerned about pressing leaves and apple-harvesting field trips around the Autumnal Equinox? Or not worry, because Christianity has not tried to co-opt that ancient festival?

[centralcal]

Jane: "I always thought Kwanzaa was a holiday we imported to appease Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton."

I don't think anything about it was "imported" from anywhere. A few years ago (my memory is hazy) I read a bio about a Gal (I think it was a she) that completely "invented" the whole celebration - taking some from this religion and that religion and throwing in some new mumbo jumbo to make it sound like it had an African origin.

It has no history beyond its creator/creation.

[Sue]

I don't know how to find it, but last year, Lashawn Barber had a post on the origins of Kwanzaa and why it is a farce.

[centralcal]

Back to the subject of this post -- I wonder if Kos's traffic is off due to his selling out to "the Man" by becoming a political pundit for Time?

[centralcal]

oops! Or was it Newsweek? I don't read either one, cancelled my subscription to Time about 15 years ago.

[Sue]

Actually, I do know how to find it. Here

[RichatUF]

Walter-

Kwanzaa is Ann Coulter's favorite "holiday".

Shorter Coulter: A Black Nationalist group, United Slaves and its leader, grafted the principles of the SLA onto the cult and the FBI encouraged the practice. Its fake, doesn't have its roots in Africa or African history, and is another vehicle to move multiculturalism and postmodernism to ever younger generations.

IIRC the "celebration" reached its high point in the mid-to-late 1990's, and like most bad ideas from the 1960's, is still lingering on, with a romantic aroma, supported by those in positions of power trying to relive their youth. Gramsci would weep at his success.