RALEIGH – Thank you.
The sentiment needs no adjectival adornment. Thanks for visiting Carolina Journal Online, for reading CJ, for listening to CJ Radio, and for visiting the John Locke Foundation’s other websites and blogs. We appreciate it. We appreciate you.
Ever since JLF went online in 1996, we have seen the web as an important new tool in communicating the freedom philosophy and encouraging informed public discussion of the major issues facing North Carolina. Over the years, our web presence has grown to include CJ’s online edition, special sites targeting particular issues and geographical regions of the state, a half-dozen blogs, and other outreach projects.
We certainly don’t neglect the traditional media. We still publish CJ in print form for some 200,000 monthly readers across North Carolina. Every day, we provide information and analysis to news reporters and producers, resulting in thousands of appearances each year in the print and broadcast news media. Columns and op-eds distributed by JLF appear in an average of 55 newspapers each week, with a combined circulation of approximately 700,000 North Carolinians. In 2006, we hosted or co-hosted 83 separate events in Raleigh, Charlotte, the Triad, Asheville, Wilmington, and other communities, presenting some of America’s most intriguing and insightful political analysts and policymakers to thousands of North Carolinians. And we’re on track to publish a dozen major policy reports and 40 or so Spotlight briefing papers in 2007 on topics ranging from the state budget and taxation to education, health care, the environment, and political reform.
But perhaps the most encouraging signs of growth in the audience for JLF’s programs and services can be found online. During the first six months of 2007, our websites averaged about 150,000 visits a month from 86,000 monthly visitors accounting for some 370,000 page views. Our traffic has more than doubled in two years, with blogs leading the way. A year ago, only about 20 percent of our total web traffic came from our statewide and regional blogs. Now it’s about 40 percent.
The Internet has certainly changed the way we do business at JLF. More generally, the community of public-policy organizations within which we operate – Right, Left, Center, and unclassifiable – is a fundamentally different place than it was just five years ago, largely because of the burgeoning growth of online interaction and readership. And as Greensboro-based journalist and blogger Ed Cone explains in this fascinating new piece, political campaigns are still grappling with the opportunities and challenges of politics in the Internet Age.
Want to learn more? Then go to your calendar right now and mark off Saturday, Sept. 8. That’s when the N.C. Institute of Political Leadership and JLF will be co-hosting “Spinning the Web: Politics in the Internet Age,” a half-day conference at the Hilton-Research Triangle Park. We’ll have panels on such issues as the new online campaign, web tools for political reporting, and how blogging is transforming the political conversation. Our panelists will include N.C. print and broadcast reporters, bloggers such as Ed Cone and Mary Katharine Ham, Democratic and Republican campaign strategists, and local professors. More details will follow shortly in this space.
Again, thanks for reading. We’ll continue our efforts to deliver the original articles, columns, news summaries, and handy links that so many CJO readers tell us they have made a part of their morning routine. Feel free to send any comments or suggestions my way at [email protected].
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.