January Site Stuff

Thanks to everybody who's been visiting this site.

Grits had its highest ever traffic week last week with Rev. Bean guest blogging from the Tom Coleman perjury trial, averaging just over 400 people per day. (I'm told we can expect Alan's final installment later today, plus a longer, reflective piece in a forthcoming Texas Observer.) By tomorrow, Grits will have topped 12,000 visitors since I added the sitemeter in late October. Most impressive to me, today is the halfway point in January, and already Grits has exceeded its total visitors for December, which itself, despite a steep holiday decline, exceeded November's totals. A lot of new folks are finding the site. Please keep coming!

A few more folks are linking to the site, too, with Alan's guest blogging series providing a tremendous boost in both traffic and number of links to Grits. (I told him I think y'all like his writing better than mine.) The TTLB Ecosystem has boosted Grits from the "Adorable Rodent" to "Marauding Marsupial" category, at least for the time being. That's mostly because of generous linkage by Charles, Jeralyn, Pete, Libby, Loretta, Lauri - plus a couple that hadn't linked here before, BuzzFlash and Sisyphus Shrugged - to the Tom Coleman perjury trial coverage.

I left a comment responding to Grits' newly discovered, yet-to-be-updated shadow blog, The Gypsy Cop Blog, pointing "Buck" to my response to his post, but nothing new there, yet.

Finally, as mentioned previously, Grits has been nominated for Wampum's Koufax Award for "Best Single Issue Blog." I'd sort of noted it as a nice compliment, but now it looks like I may actually be in the running to reach the finals. My boss Will Harrell at ACLU of Texas is, naturally, a devoted Grits reader, and he sent out an email asking other readers to vote. Many did: Thank you so much, to Will and to those who voted! Everybody came in a pack (much to two-time winner Jeralyn's chagrin). Truth is, when I looked at the list of Grits voters, a couple of you I wonder whether you actually know any other single issue blogs! But I appreciate you voting me "best" either way. There are names among those voters from ACLU'ers, NAACP, Tulia Friends of Justice, Texas Inmate Family Association, prisoner re-entry programs, even one or two D.C. policy wonk types. That speaks to one of the things I think is special about this blog -- Grits is part of a movement for criminal justice reform in Texas along with a lot of groups listed in links section in the column to the right. The work I'm doing here is just one piece of a much bigger puzzle, and I'm glad the readers who voted for Grits think it's playing an important role. It appears voting is still open at Wampum. Go here to give Grits some love by leaving your vote in the comments section. While you're at it, I'd strongly encourage you to check out the other really cool competitor blogs listed there, click around, and update your bookmarks!