Memories…

The entire August 2004 archive is now available.  We managed 78 posts, with distribution as follows:

• 34 Farley
• 20 Lemieux
• 23 djw
• 1 Loomis (early guest post)

We don’t have traffic stats for this period, but to the best of my recollection we were drifting around 10000 visits per day.  This would go up to about 25000 by November, then drop back to 8000 or so in early 2005. By comparison, August 2013 at LGM saw 303 posts with 570000 visits.

Over dinner and drinks at APSA, djw asked “does it hold up?”  The answer is… sort of.  The bulk of production concentrates on the 2004 election, and while some essays about long-ago-and-better-forgotten campaigns have enduring value, most do not. The authorial voices are clearly emerging, and in Scott’s writing it’s easy to detect the emerging contours of the blogger he is today. The archive is more interesting as a window into the blogosphere of 2004, with some still-fertile cross-pollination between right and left, and several cameos from writers who are still around (Digby), writers who have changed immensely (Ezra Klein), and writers who have blessedly passed beyond my consciousness (several of the more awful contributors at Tacitus). For this period of LGM, the month includes surprisingly few rants against either Ralph Nader or Mickey Kaus.