Making the Rounds of the Montana Blogosphere

Every morning I go to the various Montana political blogs.
 
I enjoy doing this, seeing what’s new.
 
As some readers may know, I analyze those blogs as well.
 
The last time we did this was in August in a post called The State of Montana Blogs: 3-Month Update.
 
It’s a good post if you want to know which sites are getting the most traffic.
 
Doing a quick check of those sites today I see their global reach rank is as follows:
 

• Amazon: #4
• CNN: #15
• Porn Hub: #35
• Washington Post: #39
• Missoulian: #13,390
• Flathead Beacon: #100,217
• Last Best News: #164,545
• MT Cowturd: #201,016
• Big Sky Words: #401,127
• Intelligent Discontent: #414,822
• Missoula Current: #2,661,554
• Flathead Memo: #5,718,771
• Reptile Dysfunction: #15,822,206
• The Western Word: #26,169,664
• Logicosity: No Rank

 
I threw in a few extra ones there for comparison’s sake. For instance, I find it interesting that a porn site is doing better than one of the nation’s ‘best’ newspapers.
 
Tells you what people think is important.
 
Anyways, if we want to go back and compare those numbers with the numbers we saw 2 months ago we find that:
 

• Reptile Dysfunction has increased 10 million places in rank

 

• Intelligent Discontent has increased 250,000 places

 

• Big Sky Words has increased 46,000 places

 

• The Missoulian has dropped 4,000 places in rank

 

• The Flathead Beacon has dropped 60,000 places

 

• Last Best News has dropped 65,000 places

 

• MT Cowturd has dropped 85,000 places

 

• Missoula Current has dropped 2.2 million places

 

• Flathead Memo has dropped 5 million places

 
I get those numbers from website ranking site Alexa, which has been operating since 1996 and has 25,000 user extensions in operation to get website data.
 
I think it’s interesting…maybe you do too!
 

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So…what are these blogs telling us?
 
If we head on over to MT Cowturd we find that over the past month they’ve put up:
 

• 9 posts against Juras

 

• 3 posts against Robert Saunders

 

• 3 posts against Zinke

 

• 3 posts against Trump

 

• 2 posts against Gianforte

 

• 1 post against trapping

 

• 1 post against Stapleton

 

• 1 post against Taylor Rose

 
They also put up 12 of what I call miscellaneous posts.
 
In case you haven’t noticed, it’s kinda hard to tell what Cowturd is for.
 
A big problem with Cowturd is that they speak out against what they oppose so much that we never really hear that much on what they support.
 
For instance, I saw on #mtpol today that Cowturd was telling us to vote against the brain cancer initiative.
 
Wouldn’t it be better to put up a post on the site saying that? It does have a much higher reach than Twitter, after all, and a lot more staying power.
 
Alas, from the posts over the last month it’s clear that is not what is happening.
 
Actions speak louder than words, and in this case Cowturd would much rather have us foaming at the mouth over GOP candidates than seriously looking at the issues.
 
Western Word out of Great Falls is one that I don’t have on my bookmark bar.
 
I just click to the site via Twitter’s #mtpol.
 
Really, if you want to see what politicians and their hangers-on are thinking in Montana, you need to check #mtpol at least once a day.
 
So anyways, I went over to Western Word today and read the post and got to thinking…what’ll change?
 
I went ahead and asked Jackie Brown if he thinks his life will be much different 4 years from now regardless of who wins.
 
“Nope. Probably not,” he replied.
 
I think that’s sad.
 
Trump…Hillary…if my life isn’t going to be any different in 2020 after one of those two have had their way with us…then what the hell are we doing?
 
Personally, I don’t think the presidential election really matters that much.
 
What does the president actually control?
 
Not much.
 
The globalists control things, the billionaires as well. I told in August you about the $17 billion tax loophole for hedge fund managers that Trump promised to close.
 
Then he won the primaries, and he did that by spending all his money.
 
So he had to drag himself over to Paul “The Vulture” Singer to get a lot of money, and guess what the deal was after the Vulture wrote that check?
 
Trump can go ahead and close that loophole, but he has to open a new and bigger one.
 
No, I don’t think the president really controls anything anymore…just the international corporations and billionaire class.
 

 
Reptile Dysfunction is a good site at pointing out how little things change no matter who’s elected or how much we study the problem.
 
A big problem for the site, however, is that few people care.
 
Two months ago we saw that 68,795 people had visited the site since it started, or 4,600 a month.
 
In the time since then 7,866 more people have visited…though since this is “blog hits” it could be the same people coming back checking comments.
 
So that’s about 131 people a day that visit that site.
 
Not a whole lot, but I don’t see this site stopping.
 
One site I do see folding up soon is Missoula Current.
 
That’s a shame, as they do a good job reporting local issues…something the Missoulian should be doing.
 
But how do you account for that monumental loss in traffic over the past two months?
 
I think the answer is simple – people don’t care about the site’s content so they’re not visiting.
 
Will changes be coming forth?
 
I doubt it.
 
Kidston keeps up the same style and routine while the guest posts aren’t even worth reading.
 
I was offered a once-a-week guest posting spot on the site, but after doing it one time I thought to myself…’why?’
 
I mean, Kidston calls me a troll and blocks me on social media.
 
It's not my job to 'help' him.
​ 
We’ll see if he can help himself out of the doldrums he’s put himself in.
 
I’m not feeling confident he can.
 
We could profile a few of the others sites, but what’s the point?
 
Flathead Memo will keep putting up their stuff, and Last Best News will continue to lead the MT blogosphere pack.
 
What is that Billings site’s winning strategy?
 
I see Intelligent Discontent continuing to put up tons of anti-Zinke posts, and I feel we’ll see more guest posts from Josh Manning on that subject.
 
It should be clear to most that Manning is going to try his hand at that U.S. House seat in 2018.
 
I will most definitely be voting Libertarian or Republican if that is the case.
 
Personally I think the Flathead Beacon is the best newspaper in the state, mainly because it’s free and you can comment.
 
I don’t even click on my 10 free articles a month on the Missoulian anymore.
 
That shit rag has gone downhill so much it’s not even funny. I feel sorry for people that pay for it.
 
And thankfully we continue to get coverage on forgotten and never-heard-of news stories from our TV sites.
 
I visit KPAX, KECI, and KXLH, myself.
 
They do a good job, though some stories are way too short.
 

 
And what about this site?
 
Well, I was pleased to see that I’d increased in the rankings somewhat.
 
I continue to get about 900 to 1,100 different people visiting each day according to my site’s analytics, and about 500 to 700 visiting each day according to Google, which just measures direct hits from their search engine.
 
I’ll be honest – they ain’t comin’ to read about what we just talked about.
 
Montana politics appeals to few.
 
People from all over the place like reading about Montana celebrities, writing tips, conspiracies, mountain men, and other things that I have written about and continue to write about.
 
Hell, two articles I did in October 2013 account for a sizeable chunk of my traffic each month and a good amount of my advertising revenue.
 
So it’s not all about politics.
 
I’d like to take a break myself, and I kind of did that last week.
 
I’ve been thinking of taking a break after the election, and honestly, I don’t think anyone would miss me.

Maybe it'd be a good idea to just take the week before the election off as well.

I don't see many minds changing no matter what I or others write.
 
So maybe I’ll do that.
 
Will the other blogs?
 
We’ll see.