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STATE OF THE BLOG (2020)

Happy New Year to all of our blog community from around the world. As has been our tradition on this blog, with the start of 2020, I thought I would share our annual “State of The Blog” statistics from the last year. It has been a great year for the blog with the highest traffic in the history of our blog. We continued our expansion internationally. While we post a separate blog when we pass each million mark (and we are close to another such update), we use New Year’s day to take stock — and to celebrate — our blog.  This year was not just the best year in terms of traffic on the blog, it was over twice the traffic of prior years with over 10 million views and tens of thousands of regular readers following us on Twitter and email. It is an astonishing growth for a humble blog with no budget and no revenue. But we still have an abundance passion and apparently an increasing number of other people looking for a civil forum to discuss the legal, political, and social issues of our time.

Thanks to all of our regulars and particularly Darren Smith who continues to monitor the blog and write on the weekend. We currently have almost 48 million views. This covers 19,558 individual postings and roughly 128,000 comments.  We currently have roughly 133,000 following on Twitter with thousands more following through email. In 2020 alone, we had almost 1000 columns posted.

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. Netherlands
6. European Union
7. Mexico
8. France
9. Israel
10. New Zealand

The most popular post in 2020 was Two New York Attorneys Arrested For Throwing Molotov Cocktail At Police [Updated]

That blog was followed in popularity by the following:

2  Seattle City Council Member Suggests Firing White Officers In Massive Reduction Of Police Department

3. Big League Censorship? Michigan Attorney General Threatens Criminal Prosecution Over Posting Of Video Alleging Voter Fraud

4.  President Obama Declares “There Is No Precedent That Anybody Can Find” For The Flynn Motion [He May Want To Call Eric Holder]

5. “All Speech Is Not Equal”: Biden Taps Anti-Free Speech Figure For Transition Lead On Media Agency

Thanks again everyone for making this site and 2020 such a great success!

Best wishes for the New Year!

Jonathan Turley

34 thoughts on “STATE OF THE BLOG (2020)”

  1. Here are three suggestions for commenters if I may

    1. don’t absorb page after page of comments with your singular obsession on one narrow political topic which will be stale by next week

    2. don’t sit comfortably in your own intellectual stovepipe asserting things you find obvious amd others do not. . actually try and interact with people who disagree, at least make an attempt to convince.

    3. aim for civil conversation as a general approach.

    these would make the comments area richer and more interesting

    Saloth Sar

  2. “people looking for a civil forum to discuss the legal, political, and social issues of our time.”

    Thank you, Professor Turley, for providing this venue! It is much appreciated!

    Thank you, Darren, for your weekend posts and for your help when WordPress gets hungry!

  4. Thanks, JT, for an island of sanity in a sea of garbage! (sorry about the mixed metaphor!)

  5. In addition to the United States, our two leading contributing countries were again Canada and Great Britain among 226 other countries.

    That’s quite an accomplishment, given the fact there are currently only 195 countries on the planet.

    1. if you use Tor Browser, your connection goes through 3 countries.
      My comment goes through a confifuration that uses Netherlands, Germany and Czechia but I live in the USA

  6. “an increasing number of other people looking for a civil forum to discuss the legal, political, and social issues of our time.”
    Love your articles, JT, but the comments section is becoming almost as big a sewer as Twitter.

    1. Comments section could use some reform. Edit button would be nice. I’m still not sure how people post videos, doesn’t seem to be bbcode. But I suppose he’s got privacy settings how he wants them and changing things without a disclaimer could incur liability, particularly if our more anonymous users got doxxed. The comments have increasingly become far right but that’s everywhere that isn’t heavily moderates these days.

      1. Regular commenters like you, Natacha, Fish Wings, CTHD, Joe Friday, Bug Elvis, and dozens more are Left of CCP. Your ilk post back to back to flood the comments section, typical of other George Soros funded troll farms

        1. Someone is paying me to post? Well that would be nice if true. Unfortunately you like the dozens of other far right posters here seem to think anyone to the left of Romney is in CCP territory forgetting most of the modern world is to the left of Romney. I like that Romney had enough spine to call Trump out for his antics including ones in support of a former KGB dictator, but when he went on his world tour even Israel was shocked by how far right some of his comments were. George W, Reagan, George HW, and even Nixon might be considered RiNOs by today’s GOP. You can’t say the converse about a party now led by a man who was a moderate senator during the Nixon and ministration.

          1. *administration. Once again, Turley, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to add the edit button that is missing.
            Damn Russian auto-correct

    2. I’m awaiting the day when Turley will subject himself to an online debate with a lawyer or interviewer who will confront his false narratives instead of his appearing on Trump TV where he is not so challenged. Even Talk Radio hosts occasionally take a question from a listener, but Turley simply lectures us with his views without defending them against criticism. The fact that he has not or will not expose himself to any criticism in a public forum is cowardly.

  7. I think the blog and discussion would benefit from JT responding to comments generally from time to time — perhaps once a week if that is not too burdensome.

    1. That would definitely be too burdensome. The guy lectures multiple classes day and night, argues in court, argues before congress, grades students, appears on c-span, writes for the wsj and has a full family and network of friends to tend to. He’s a bit of an obsessive so if he got involved in the comments I’m not sure how he’d continue to function though I do wonder if he did a decade or so ago when the blog was smaller. Happy 2021 to you both though.

  8. “Thanks again everyone for making this site and 2020 such a great success!”

    Your brains and your passion make it possible. So: Thank you! (And a tip of the hat to Darren.)

  9. Thanks for making each day more interesting on the web. So little of that these days

  10. It’s 2021. Americans have to face the as lity. Smoking suicide killed 480,000 plus people in America last year. Some died of second hand smoke. That second hand term meant they were dumb enough to stay in close proximity to dumb smokers.
    Some of the dead covid patients were dumb smokers and that made them more likely to croak from covid.

    The media talks about covid 24/24. Never does the media talk about dumb smokers and their higher death toll.

  12. Congrats on the growth of the readers. And it is exponential if the rate of growth increases with time. The graph of the function need merely to have rising slope. Which means a positive exponent. For example Readers = e^.1(time) will have a slight upward slope that is also concave up which means its rate of growth is also increasing. Most investments have grow exponentially with time and can be approximated with Amount = Principal times e^ (rate times time) : abbreviated as A = Pert. Investments grow exponentially but slowly for lower rates.

  13. (music to the tune of The Jets)

    It’s a blog it’s a blog.
    It’s a blog all the way.
    From its first cup of tea to its last bale of hay.
    The topics are legal and have politics too.
    One must be careful to separate the two.

  14. JT, that use of “exponentially” is unfortunately common, but unjustified. Don’t misuse terms from another field, in this case mathematics.

    1. Happy New Year to you, Professor Turley! I am deeply grateful for your continuous focus on topics of interest and your wonderful perspective on the issues. At a time when the mainstream media continues to disappoint, it is refreshing to read the blog posts. Thank you for sharing your keen intellect and your rich experience.

    2. Why is use of the term unjustified? Your comment is meaningless without explanation.

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