Once I started emailing my blog to people, I had a list of names I could relate to. Before that, I didn't know who looked at it. Blogger gives some statistics by the day, week, month and overall but I didn't know who. I found what many businesses seem to have found: if things get mailed or emailed directly to a person, those things get read more.
That goes for me, too. I get "Significant Digits" and "Numlock News", more or less started by Walt Hickey and then expanded so there are two newsletters that are available in free version and in paid versions. Judd Legum developed "Popular Information", which is not about numbers in the news but is about insights into current politics and how things actually work. I get many publications in my Inbox from Brookings Institute, Library of Congress, Amazon promoting ebooks, CNN, BBC, Seth Godin's blog, New Yorker, and others.
I was ready to forward today's Popular Information to this blog but I am not sure that is a fair thing to do. I think that Popular Information is the most daring item I get. I was ready to subscribe but they weren't ready to take the card I wanted to use. It is daring in the sense that the writer seems to get behind the surface story and give the facts and figures and truths about who is doing what with whom. Judd Legum has some impressive scoops and revelations, such as large corporations that assert their democratic stance while giving big donations to biases politicians.
More and more organizations seem to be on the same track as I have been. They want to know an email address that they can email information about their great sale, or the virtues of their chairman. It has gotten so that there are days, like today, when I could stand reading all the stuff that comes in but I am not really in the mood. Gmail gives me the option to select all messages I have left unread and delete them all with one click. I realize some good stuff is going unread when I do that, but I am not up to reading all that stuff.
