We are continuing to experience a surge in viewers. 2020 was a record year in terms of traffic and 2021 is continuing to surpass the prior year by a good measure. The blog continues to grow with new regular commenters and a growing international readership. Again, we thank our loyal readers who return every day to discuss contemporary legal, political, and occasionally bizarre stories. We have used these moments to give thanks for our many regular readers around the world and give you an idea of the current profile of readers on the blog. We continue to rank with the top legal blogs in the world. As always, I want to offer special thanks for Darren Smith who has continued to help manage the blog and help out folks who encounter posting problems. I also want to thank our regular readers who email me to flag my signature typos or any violations of the civility or copyright policies on the blog.
This blog was created well over a decade ago during a family vacation to North Carolina. While at a rental beach house, I was on the telephone with my editor at USA Today who was urging me again to join other columnists on their blog. I was entirely unfamiliar with blogs and resisted. (The same resistance that I am now showing to those encouraging me to do a podcast). As my family can attest, I am one of the most habit-bound, tech-challenged creatures on the planet. Joining us at the beach that year were my wife’s family who were already considerable figures on the Internet with great success in the area in politics, academic, and business. When I got off the call, they called me into the living room and presented me with my new blog, which they had registered and designed during the course of my telephone call. Res Ipsa was born.
From that day, the blog seemed to take deep roots and grow steadily until it was one of the most visited legal blogs and our growth rate continued to increase steadily through the years. I hear regularly from reporters, members of Congress, judges and others who follow the blog and it gives me a great sense of pride in the heterogeneous makeup of our virtual community.
Each day I select a couple of stories that I thought might be interesting to our community. While the blog has a well-known free speech focus, we are not limited in our subjects and routinely explore new developments in science, politics, the environment, and other fields. That includes everything from the latest NASA images to simply bizarre stories that pop up from time to time. It is an idiosyncratic collection that reflects a host (and a group of readers) with eclectic interests. One of the greatest surprises with the blog was to learn that there were other people out there with quirky interests and wandering minds.
So here is our current profile:
As of this morning, we have over 19,798 posts and well over 1,000,000 comments. With the meltdown at Twitter, we saw a notable drop in Twitter subscribers as thousands of people have boycotted the company over its censorship policies. Nevertheless, we are gradually picking up Twitter subscribers again. We stand at over 207,000 Twitter followers and 5,208 people who signed up for alerts by emails.
In the last 90 days, our ten biggest international sources for readers came from:
1. United States
2. Canada
3. United Kingdom
4. Australia
5. Germany
6. Netherlands
7. France
8. Israel
9. New Zealand
10. Japan
The top five posted in terms of readership in the last 90 days are:
2. Project Veritas Wins Victory Against New York Times In Defamation Action
3. Prosecutors Ask Jurors To Dismiss George Floyd Autopsy Findings
5.Is Eric Swalwell The Answer To Trump’s Prayers?
Thank you to all of our regular commentators. We remain an extraordinarily broad and diverse body of commenters from different parts of the world and different political and social backgrounds. Thanks again.