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I've enjoyed in the past few weeks getting a significantly increased amount of reader email, and suspected that my site had gone from being something largely checked by a few friends and regulars, to something seen by a slightly broader group. I got on a site usage tracking program for the first time today and the facts bear out those observations. I got 300,000 hits in June, and just under 90,000 visits, with a daily average of 10,000 hits per day, up from half that in May, and a quarter of that in April. July still has a couple weeks left but looks set to be close to June's numbers. [The list of referring sites, if I understand it, is just what I would have expected, since they are largely what I spend the most time on: after this site, they are the Washington Monthly, Atrios, Google, Yahoo, Talking Points Memo, Matthew Yglesias, Phil Carter's Intel Dump, the American Prospect, msn.com, TomPaine.com, cryptome.org, theleftcoaster.org, Digsby, Liberal Oasis, Ruy Teixeira, The New Republic, the Daily Kos, and google canada in that order.] Why the Weekly Standard is not on this list I don't understand.
I've been spending more time on the site while working on some larger investigative pieces, and that effort on the site has paid off thanks very much to readers, fellow bloggers, and colleagues. Many thanks to everybody, especially Kevin Drum and Karen Thomas who have been generous with technical advice. I hope to spend a few days making the site look a bit spiffier in the next few weeks so bear with me through any reconstruction.
These investigative projects take an extraordinary amount of effort and a good dose of patience and restraint; but one advantage is that in reporting them one acquires a lot of material, some of which is well suited to this sort of site -- it can go out quickly and provide some intriguing strings to pull as news develops.