Last updated on 2012.08.05
That Sioux Falls paper has stepped up its online game by bringing the peripatetic David Montgomery aboard. Its newest newshound notes his swift blog success:
A big thank you to all the readers of Political Smokeout. This blog's been around for just shy of six weeks, starting on May 23. Already, for the first full month, I had 10,320 page views — and that's with me taking a week off from posting while on vacation.
That makes Political Smokeout, in its sixth week, the most-visited Argus Leader news blog, and a close second overall behind Terry Vandrovec's great sports blog [David Montgomery, "Thanks," that Sioux Falls paper: Political Smokeout, 2012.07.03].
Breaking 10,000 monthly views just six weeks after moving from Blogmore, nearly tying the big sports blog—that's great! The vital business of democracy may beat the jockocracy yet! Mr. Montgomery's crack reporting deserves the attention.
Now Montgomery said a "close second"... that means Androvec got, what, 11,000 views? Maybe 12,000? Just think, advertisers, whatever you paid to that Sioux Falls paper to rotate in with Colorado Technical's insults to education on Androvec's sidebar, you could have paid to the Madville Times for an ad that would have appeared on every one of the 86,586 views that happened in June.
Notice how we are looking at a newspaper who can only compete with itself? The news department has to compete with is own sports department of kudos? I like Montgomery's work, he has a lot to learn but he is getting there. Don't brag externally about an intra-paper departmental competition and have us care, it shows how shallow the entire newspaper and management is.
Good for David! As a product of Grinnell College his critical thinking skills have been finely honed.
Kind of surprised that he he didn't include John Thune's performance on the Hugh Hewitt radio show. JT tried to burnish his radical right street cred by agreeing with the host that the ACA was killing people and that it had the same or worse impact on the country as 9-11.
http://www.hughhewitt.com/transcripts.aspx?id=7b7e9c7b-218f-4e56-81c8-e920df6aa4a2
Now either Thune agrees with him by saying "yeah" or he was just being a bobble head and didn't have the guts to disagree...
Just once I wish these so-called courageous conservatives would do what John McCain did in whacking some of these nut jobs when the talk nonsense.
Maybe David will ask Senator Thune about this the next time they talk...
Sometimes I think that I would like Thune to get the VP nod...just so there would be a serious public vetting of John and his past.
You know, kind of like he and his lackey government employees Lauck and Blanchard did for him against Daschle.
David needs more commenters on his blog to take off like Madville. Political Smokeout is nice to read but it also is good for the readers to interact and provide their view.
That's what sets Madville, Southdacola, Blogmore and SDWC apart from every other blog in the state. There are a lot of people who make repeat visits just to read the comments. (I've always said Pure Pierre Politics would be a better blog if there were comments more often)
On the stuff about bragging I think that just goes back to this post that Woster put on Blogmore last year. Probably a little friendly rivalry going on between the two.
http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/app/blogs/politicalblog/?p=7920
Nobody trusts the media guys out of fear that they'll be hunted like a rodent with dogs and then shot. At least with Mr. H. you know you're getting his gut feelings even if they are misplaced. With the media you just know they are misrepresenting to make a buck. Mr. H. may be a poop stirrer but he's a forthright stirrer and you know all issues point back to 1.2.3.4 when you come here to read goin in.
Ok. So we click the "comments" button and nothing happens. And there are no comments, anyway. Perhaps Mr. Montgomery's blog is captive of Beck's "facebook only" commenting input - which served its purpose to dry-up the public exchange of ideas, thoughts, and input - apparently they don't need "the market place of ideas" in Sioux Falls. They should either open up the floor microphone or kill the comments button.
Strange, John: I've left comments at Political Smokeout. The button works for me... did you get hung up on the log-in feature?
Grudz, not every issue points back to 1234/Referred Law 16. Madison's thrift store proposal and failed economic development policies, for instance, are separate from our education debate... although both suffer from the same problem as Daugaard's education bill: an arrogant focus on top-down governance with no attention to the evidence of results and complete exclusion of genuine popular participation.
PP resigning? josh verges â€@ua14
Gant says Powers resigned "to spend more time with his children and pursue business opportunities in the private sector."
Gant is looking for a scapegoat. The problem is Gant not PP.