Following are the top ten political blogs and local blogs in Maryland as measured by their combined publicly-available site visit counts in January and February. We have tracked 43 blogs that release their data since June 2007.
During the first two months of this year, these were the top ten blogs in Maryland that focus on state and local politics.
We believe O’Malley Watch would make this list but they do not release their site statistics. Pillage Idiot, which stopped publishing in January 2009, still beats out several active political blogs.
These were the top ten blogs in Maryland that focus on events in local areas.
Two notable omissions are Salisbury News and the Pocomoke Tattler, neither of which release their site statistics.
And here are the combined statistics for all 43 blogs we track as well as broad categories of blogs.
These stats illustrate the continuation of several trends that have been in evidence for some time now. First, Maryland’s blogosphere is still much smaller than D.C.’s but it is growing fast – much faster than the print media. Second, locally-focused blogs draw at least as much attention as political blogs. The top four (Inside Charm City, Just Up the Pike, Tales of Two Cities and Rockville Central) are firmly established as online sources of community news. Third, the conservative blogosphere is still stalled. Aside from one link to Red Maryland in October 2009 from Michelle Malkin, right-wing blogs have not seen any growth since late 2007. What does that mean for Maryland’s GOP?
Finally, all of the above blogs deserve great credit for making their statistics available to the public. The mainstream media “blogs” do not disclose their site traffic. Neither do the new websites Marylandreporter.com and Center Maryland.