The Hits Parade

So much posting, so little interest.

One of the things I hated about my former employer, the Portland Press Herald, turning Web-crazy was that the editors who switched to online journalism became so hooked on hit numbers. Every day my email would contain self-congratulatory messages about how many hits the damn site was getting. Half the hits (or possibly more) probably involved people either posting mean comments or people checking for mean comments and hotly protesting them.

You want a reason to especially dislike the human race, check what people say in reaction to political blogs. I've stumbled across a few, purely by naive accident, thinking someone might have something intelligent to say, and I've been blown away by the vituperation.

So do I care if my blog gets hits? Well, first of all, it appears that I have no way of checking. I used to have a tool called "Analytics" that let me track the number of hits, what search engines sent them, and what keywords were used. That seems to have disappeared in the most recent round of site "improvements." Second of all, I find myself not really caring. It's fun to write. And I've never really cared about being popular.

Good thing, huh?????