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Blow Out Year: Res Ipsa Hits 55,000,000

On New Year’s Eve, Res Ipsa passed the 55,000,000 mark in views on the blog to close out a blowout year for our blog. 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. 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.

So here is our current profile:

As of this morning, we have over 20,318 posts and roughly 1,200,000 comments. With the meltdown at Twitter last year, we saw a notable drop in Twitter subscribers. Even though Twitter has refused to verify me four times, we have made up that loss and we are now approaching 250,000 subscribers.  We have roughly 6,000 people who signed up for alerts by emails.

In the last year, our ten biggest international sources for readers came from:

1. United States
2. Canada
3. United Kingdom
4. Australia
5. Germany
6. Netherlands
7. Spain
8. France
9. Brazil
10. New Zealand

The top five posts in terms of readership in the last year were:

  1. FBI Raids Project Veritas Writers . . . Over A Missing Biden Diary?
  2. CDC Admits That It Miscalculated The Risk Of Outdoor Covid Transmission
  3. Beware the Eephus: Washington on Edge As Durham Prepares Possible Indictments and Report
  4. Project Veritas Wins Victory Against New York Times In Defamation Action
  5. Twitter Censors Criticism of BLM Founder Buying $1.4 Million Home In Predominantly White Neighborhood

This has been an extraordinary year. I cannot thank our regulars enough for their support of the blog. We remain an extraordinarily broad and diverse body of commenters from different parts of the world and different political and social backgrounds. Like all blogs, we have our trolls and those who reject civil discourse. Nevertheless, as a free speech blog, we minimize deletions and bans, as discussed in our civility policy. We have one of the lowest rates of deletions or bans that I know of. We want to keep it that way. This can be frustrating for many but we have worked hard not to follow other blogs in either closing all comments or engaging in active viewpoint discrimination.

The success of the blog continues to amaze me. As we have discussed in the past, Res Ipsa 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. 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 major figures on the Internet with great success in the area in politics, academia, 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.

We are now at 55 million hits and are routinely ranked with the top legal blogs in the world. We have also attracted our share of accolades, including the ABA Journal for its blog Hall of Fame. That is due in large part to our regulars who add perspectives and passion to the issues that we discuss.

In these trying times, it is nice to have a place (even a virtual place) where you can go to discuss the issues of our day from the momentous to the simply odd. I hope that you continue to find this to be a site worthy of your time and your contributions.

So, here’s hoping for a great year to come for our country, our families, and, yes, our blog. I will be toasting to you all tonight (which is also my anniversary) to ring in 2022.

 

36 thoughts on “Blow Out Year: Res Ipsa Hits 55,000,000”

  2. That would be unbelievable, except it’s the same Twitter that refuses to recognize me as a world class singer!

    Maybe we can sing a blues duet?

    😁😉

  3. I appreciate your even-handed analysis of the issues. Thank you for your hard and good work. Happy New Year!

  4. As former commenter, Paul S. Schulte used to say, “thank you for allowing us to play in your sandbox”. Your blog has been a respite for those of us in the trenches, whatever our station in life, fighting the good fight, yet needing a place to catch our breath.

    Happy new year to all. Remember to practice self-care.

    The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time

    ― Jack London

  6. Congratulation counselor. As a fellow attorney I greatly appreciate your perspectives/legal analyses eloquently presented. Happy New Year!

  11. Congratulations on the success of Res Ipsa! It continues to amaze me that you take the time and have the energy to construct as many wonderful blog posts as you do on a daily basis, especially since you are also engaged on a full time basis as a professor of law. It has been decades since I graduated from law school, but I would surely love to take your class on Constitutional law. Would GW permit you to do a zoom class on select Constitutional topics from time to time? Thank you for all you do!’ Happy New Year!🎈

  13. Congratulations! What else can one say? Keep up the stellar insights and especially continue to allow even the most ‘raunchy’ responses to have their say. Here’s to an even more accomplished 2022, a year in which we’ll see a November election which has the potential to rock the country, no matter one’s politics.

  15. “. . . over 20,318 posts . . .”

    *That* is a remarkable achievement!

    “I will be toasting to you all tonight . . .”

    And one to you (and Darren).

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