Happy New Year to all of our blog community from around the world. As I mentioned yesterday, I get to celebrate both New Years and my anniversary on the 31st. Leslie and I eloped in Alexandria Virginia on New Year’s Eve in 1997 — making this our 20th anniversary. (We disagree on the number for celebrating since I count the 8 years that we dated — making this our 28th). I make our traditional soup on New Year’s: The Bowl of The Wife of Kit Carson Soup. It is a hot Turkey soup that my father Jack Turley would make every New Year and was believed to be a cure for any hangover.
As has been our tradition on this blog, with the start of 2018, I thought I would wanted to share our annual “State of The Blog” statistics.
It has been a great year on the blog. Thanks to all of our regulars and particularly our our talented and popular weekend team of guest bloggers: Mike Appleton, Kimberly Dienes, Cara Gallagher, Larry Rafferty, and Darren Smith. We are closing in on 31 million views and we remained in the top legal blogs in the world.
We are approaching 34,000,000 views and saw a roughly 20 percent increase in 2017 over our views in 2016. Those following the blog grew by roughly 25 percent and now stands at roughly 36,500 followers. We also saw a sizable increase in our international followers.
Our top regular commentators for the last 1000 comments were:
1. Linda
2. Paul C. Schulte
3. Michael Aarethun
4. Olly
5. Ken
In addition to the United States, our two leading contributing countries were again Canada and Great Britain among 226 other countries.
Over the last year, the top ten countries outside of the United States were:
1. Canada
2. United Kingdom
3. Australia
4. Germany
5. India
6. Spain
7. France
8. Poland
9. New Zealand
10. Netherlands
The most popular post in 2017 was Did Comey Violate Laws In Leaking The Trump Memo?
That blog was followed in popularity by the following:
2. Five Ninth Circuit Judges Issue Rare Dissent Rebuking The Panel In Immigration Ruling
3. UC Riverside Student Charged With Grand Theft After Swiping MAGA Hat Of Fellow Student
4.The Rice Controversy: Is The Media Proving Trump Correct?
5.Court Rules Against Arizona Deputy on Swiping Lawyer’s Note — Arpaio To Defy Court
We finished 2017 with over 750,000 comments and 16,666 posts.
Thanks again everyone for making this site and 2017 such a great success!
Best wishes for the New Year!
Jonathan Turley