Since I've stopped writing my Party of One Reader Weekly column and written exclusively for this blog, my readership has gone down drastically. Over the years, I've counted (not very accurately) 158 fans of my column. That is, people I've met or known who have said they enjoyed reading my columns. In sharp contrast, this blog only gets 4-6 readers a day, mostly through the feed, and none to two directly.
I've told a dozen or more people that they can read my writings here at
http://mdmagree.blogspot.com
Some have no computer, some use their computer infrequently, and many friends that use their computers daily and liked my column don't come here.
What kind of hurts the most is that friends who liked my column are surprised to learn I no longer write for the Reader.
But even the Reader Weekly has low online readership. See
http://readerweekly.wordpress.com
Granted, the Reader is way, way behind in posting current stuff. Granted that few readers send in letters to the editor. But after one year of being online at its current address, the forum has only eight registered users one post.
I think the cause of the disparity in readership is the convenience of the newspaper. One can pick up a newspaper at anytime anywhere and read any selection quickly. To access a newspaper online, one has to have the computer on, one has to be connected to the web, and one has to remember the address of or have a bookmark for a particular paper. Then one has to wait for the initial page to download. In some cases this may seem instantaneous, but in two many cases it can be a "long" wait. Loading 2 of 10 pages, loading 5 of 15 pages, loading 20 of 43 pages, ... loading 62 of 158 pages. One could read the entire comic page on paper while waiting.
Probably the only thing that will stop the presses is bankruptcy. See "Running government like a business, a counterexample".
P.S. You can see most of my past columns from
http://www.cpinternet.com/~mdmagree
or do a search of "magree" and "reader weekly". With Google you will have to ask for all the results; otherwise it gives you only a sample of the articles I've posted.
