Blog News – September 17, 2010

Blog News – June 28, 2010

Every once and a while, I hope to comment on responses to the blog that I have gotten. It is interesting what people gravitate towards and why. Through the program I use `wordpress’ – a very popular, free and easily maneuverable one – I can tell how many `hits’ (people who visit the site), which entries or articles they read. I can also tell what searches led people to the site. I cannot tell who is reading the blog or where they are from and can only guess at that.

Some of these are obvious enough `Yemen’ or `savings and loan crisis’; others are a bit ominous; yet others people `fishing’ for pornography of one kind or another, or people who are searching for `Jew Prince’ (get more and more of those)

Here is a sampling:

1. To my surprise, – mostly because Tunisia is so far afield from Colorado – the articles on Tunisia have gotten considerable play. As of today, the two part series – Farhat Hached and the struggle for Tunisian Independence – has gotten 1750 hits and continues to be read almost every day. I have since learned somewhat more about Hached, nothing that contradicts what I have written, but that adds to it considerably and I will return to the subject again soon.
2. The 4 part (soon to be 5 part) series on the imprisonment of Fahem Boukadous, Tunisian political prisoner, has received 300 hits.
3. More than a year after writing a series on the Silverado Bank scandal of the late 1980s/early 1990s, the number of views continues to grow almost daily. The combined number of people going to those articles is now above 1300 suggesting that the subject still holds interest for people.
4. The piece `When Dems Court The Left/Peace Movement’ has been visited 505 times (as of Sept. 22)- and although written several months ago – most of those visits have been in the past week, so it struck a chord in some circle, but who/where I don’t know. I am wondering what the interest is all about. The link seems to be `hot’ for the moment.
5. My informal film reviews (Zinneman, Fuller, Imamura) has gotten over 300 hits and a number of comments (and some emails which are not posted)
6. Labor Day in Louisville Colorado has gotten 100 hits plus several comments (and criticisms) from friends in the Colorado Labor Movement

Recent searches that found this site include:

• `Carol and Larry A. Mizel’ (several pieces on the Denver developer recently)
• `military bases in Iraq’
• `Byron Plumley peace’ – director of Peace Studies at Regis University. Signed a letter to Christians about Middle East peace process
• `People Against `Bob Kinsey for Colorado’ – suspect that these could be people close to Michael Bennet’s bid for the Senate, wanting to check out their `threat from the left’…but I’m not sure of that
• `Florida Democratic Primary’ – looking for Jay Jurie’s fine piece on the Democratic Primary there
• `Jewish films’ – there is a review of a few Jewish films I’ve seen recently
• ` SODEXO Denver’ – piece on the attempt by concession workers at the University of Denver to organize a union (SEIU)
• `possible attack on Iran’
• `Van Heflen
• `Houthi victims’ – concerns the internal conflict in Yemen
• `hateful gaze’…don’t have a clue
• `Sudan – Red Sea Map’… have one of those in the series in Yemen

That give a feel for `what sells’, or at least `what is read’ these past few months

Cheers… rjp

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