Time to take stock again as sometime during the evening of April 6, the meter on this blog recorded 10,000 unique visitors. Someone reading from McLean, Virginia took the honors for setting the mark. Although reaching this goal was certainly our hope more than six months ago when the blog began, there are no guarantees in the business of blogging. We want to thank all of our readers, as Sutradhar’s Market has gained steady success and is on par with other such blogging projects, which made the jump from the classroom to global wider circulation.
We have written a few times about the behind-the-scenes workings here (please see “Editor’s Notes: Mille Gracias” and “Editor’s Notes: Centennial Posting”). But we have seen an evolution since the first months, with more and more international readers. Some weeks only about a third of the blog’s readers originate in the U.S. This week about half of our readers were from outside the United States.
From the very beginning, the blog has had international readers, which has been one of the goals, and now usually the international readership is three times larger than when we started. From the start the blog has had consistent readers in Canada and India and that remains the case. One of the newer developments is building a consistent readership on a weekly basis in the United Kingdom. This might be expected for an international blog written in English.
However, among our 10K group we’ve had readers from 116 different countries, obviously not all of them primarily English-speaking. In the past two weeks, the blog has added Papua New Guinea, Guyana, and Tajikistan to its list.
At this point, the blog has also had readers in all 50 states of the U.S. and two territories, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Based at American University, our readers there continue at the same steady pace as in the past but they only make up 13 percent of current readers. And although at one point the blog was mainly read in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area (D.C., Maryland, and Virginia), that area last week only accounted for about a third of readers, and some weeks it is less than that. About 20 percent of all readers originate in D.C., with most of those at the university. The blog has also had visitors from 84 other universities worldwide, adding readers from Lund University in Sweden this past week. Count readers at Harvard and the London School of Economics among our 10K group too. The blog also has a consistent and steady audience in both New York and California.
And since our last report of this nature, we have added readers in the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Department of Justice, various offices in the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives, the CBC in Canada, CBS News, The New York Times, the BBC, Dow Chemical and Lockheed Martin Corporation. So its not just a bunch of academics gathered here to discuss and read about international media.
And the readers apparently like variety. All of our top postings have changed since the fall. This week’s top piece with readers was Ginnie Seger’s latest “Kony2012: Lessons Learned?” She has also authored two of the top five all-time pieces for the blog, “The Kony 2012 Campaign: A Manhunt Goes Viral” and “Define Necessity: Reporting or Exploitation” (currently the most read post on the blog).
Beyond Africa, popular topics range across other continents. Popular writers include Becky Mezzanotte with “Film Review: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.” Two members of the original blogging team also have very popular posts: Swati Singh with “Social Media’s Effective Disaster Management Role in Thailand’s Floods” and Jessica Andrews with “Cinque Terre’s Flood Reveals the Power of Non-Traditional News Sources.” Given that list, does this mean the audience likes to read about disasters (specifically floods?) or national security issues? We haven’t figured that out yet. Maybe others have a definitive analysis.
You are welcome to comment about that. But more importantly, please keep reading. If you do, we’ll keep writing.
(The photo shows a market in Pakistan. This is the original thematic photo for the blog by babasteve – also known as Steve Evans of Atlanta, Ga.; the photo is used through a Creative Commons license.)
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