On Saturday, John Fund wrote a story in which he inadvertently referred to a certain well-known political blogger as:
…Ed Morrissey of the conservative blog Captain’s Quarters…
This prompted Morrissey to joke:
I’ll have to get John to update his Rolodex.
On Saturday, a Los Angeles Times op-ed by George Washington University proefessors John Sides and Eric Lawrence began:
Daily Kos. Little Green Footballs. Talking Points Memo. Instapundit. Firedoglake. Captain’s Quarters. These are among the thousands of political blogs that are increasingly a factor in U.S. politics.
If you see where I’m going with this, you are probably someone who is a constant reader of conservative blogs. If you don’t, then you probably are not.
Here’s where I’m going: Twice in two days somebody with access to the mainstream media, from just outside but interested in and conversant with the blogosphere, has failed to recognize that Morrissey shuttered his Captain’s Quarters blog almost five months ago, and has been writing for Michelle Malkin’s Hot Air ever since.
It’s almost the inverse what I’ve said about how MyDD didn’t miss a beat when its top two writers decamped for a new website: as long as it continues to fulfill its mission, many casual readers will barely notice, and will be unlikely to remove it from their bookmarks. In this case it seems that casual observers of the blogosphere are so familiar with Captain’s Quarters that they assume it must be going strong, and it will be ever thus.
In a sense, the blog appears to be influential even when unread. More accurately, Captain’s Quarters simply has strong brand equity. Morrissey’s considered, even verbose explications of the latest political developments from a realistic (though not a “realist”) conservative viewpoint maintains a presence in the mind of even very occasional readers, even if the blog itself is no longer maintained, or present.
That’s not to say his impact has diminished: in fact it may be greater than ever. And so this presents a good opportunity to run another site traffic comparison, counting unique visitors, via Compete:
When Morrissey pulled up stakes, he took his entire readership with him. They didn’t have much of a choice, as typing in the old captainsquartersblog.com URL will swiftly deposit you at hotair.com without displaying so much as a redirect page first. In fact, initially it seems Hot Air grew by an even greater number of visitors than were lost at CQ, even counting the growth in traffic Morrissey experienced in his last month blogging solo. This rapid growth has leveled off and even dipped slightly, but it’s clear now that Hot Air is twice as big as it was before. The move appears to have paid off exactly as they hoped.
I confess that back in February I was personally skeptical of Morrissey’s decision, based primarily on the fact that he was giving up such a strong brand to go join a stable of bloggers under someone else’s shingle. I’m glad now that I didn’t write about it then. But even if Hot Air had received only a modest bump in traffic, the joining of forces would probably have still been a good idea, at least for Morrissey.
Now, if the worst that can be said is that some small number of readers are still thumbing through his archives, perhaps under the impression that he is still updating posts as “Captain Ed,” then that’s fine. It even helps us spot the ones who aren’t really paying attention.
