Alert readers may have spotted that today’s Sunday Herald features Professor Adam Tomkins and myself for its weekly “In The Hot Seat” interviews with opposing figures in the independence debate. The paper’s Investigations Editor Paul Hutcheon flew down from Glasgow on Wednesday, and we had an interesting and enjoyable two-and-a-half-hour chat on the subject of the referendum and politics in general.
Obviously it’s not easy to edit that down to a short 1,000-word article. But just for fun, I thought it might be enlightening to compare the content of the two columns.
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media, navel-gazing, scottish politics
Readership stats for May, if you like that sort of thing.
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navel-gazing, stats
Readership stats for April, for those interested.
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navel-gazing, stats
The Glasgow Subway famously only ever goes round in circles, but that’s certainly not something you can say for Labour-run Strathclyde Partnership for Transport’s excuses for banning our adverts from it last month.
Because those are flying about all over the place.
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comment, navel-gazing, scottish politics, stupidity
We didn’t do a stats post at the start of April (still just under 4m pageviews a month, if you’re curious) but when someone tweeted these figures this morning we thought they were worth a wee toot, because they’re more than just nice news for us.
They’re from the independent web-traffic analysis site Alexa.com, and they detail the relative rankings for the seven biggest dedicated Scottish politics sites on the web.
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comment, media, navel-gazing, scottish politics, stats
Well, sort of, anyway. We were going to have another poll post tonight, but your eyes go a bit squiffy after an entire day of cross-referencing spreadsheets full of percentages so instead we’re just going to allow ourselves a wee brief glow of prideĀ about this.
We hadn’t any idea the vote was taking place so we couldn’t even shamelessly urge readers to stuff the virtual ballot boxes, so we’re pretty chuffed to be sharing what we’re officially calling “joint 11th place” with some very decent reporters indeed, and to even be on the same list as the likes of Alex Thomson of Channel 4 and other people who get actually shot at for a living (instead of just on the internet) isn’t the worst feeling we’ve ever had.
And the fact that we’re the only other crowdfunded operation, along with the winner, means that you – Wings Over Scotland’s readers and employers – get the credit too.
Thanks to anyone who voted for us, and to everyone who’s helped make it happen.
Tags: and finally
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media, navel-gazing
If you haven’t seen them already, a few shots of our ads on the Glasgow Subway, paid for with a small slice of fundraiser money and pictured by some alert readers.
We can’t be certain, but we think this is the first time a news-and-commentary website like Wings has ever taken out real-world advertising anywhere in the UK.
See ’em while you can, though.
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admin, navel-gazing, pictures
Someone just forwarded us the results of a survey by STV’s polling arm Scotpulse. It’s a “wordcloud” of the sort we have on this very site (it’s over on the right hand side and down a bit, marked “Tags”), where the more significant something is the bigger its name gets printed. It pretty much speaks for itself.
You’re the ones who put the word out there, readers. It’s working. Thank you.
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admin, media, navel-gazing, scottish politics
We’ve been talking about our own stats a little too much for our liking recently – we’ll give it a bit of a rest again after this month, honest. But this one’s kinda special.
Those are Wings Over Scotland’s lifetime stats – or at least, lifetime since we signed up to Google Analytics just under two years ago. And as of yesterday, they show that the site has been visited by more than a MILLION different readers over that period. And we’re damned if we’re not taking a moment to reflect on that one.
It’s been quite a ride so far. Let’s make it mean something.
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navel-gazing, stats
We like to put a bit of extra effort in in January. The excitement of a fresh new year, coupled with the need to shake people out of the festive-period stupor that otherwise kills momentum stone dead, calls for 110%. Even so, with the slow opening week and then losing most of a weekend to a server outage, we weren’t expecting this.
Not only were January’s pageview stats more than 30% up on December, but they also smashed the all-time record set in November by well over 100,000.
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navel-gazing, stats
Okay. We’re done warming up.
Time to go for it properly.
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admin, comment, navel-gazing, stats