Thanks to Our Readers!

Some time in late 2019, or possibly early 2020, Power Line will surpass one billion page views since we started the site in May of 2002. For that landmark, which we certainly failed to foresee, we are grateful to our readers. At this point, we feel like internet old-timers. A great deal has changed over the years we have been writing here.

Despite those changes, we are still going strong. PJ Media has compiled a list of the top 50 conservative web sites for 2018, using Alexa rankings based on a combination of page views and unique visitors. Power Line logs in at number 29, which I think is around where we have generally been in recent years.

Reviewing the list shows how the internet landscape has changed. Most of the sites on the top 50 list are institutional–newspapers, magazines, and internet arms of substantial organizations. Breitbart News, the Daily Caller, the Washington Examiner, National Review, Judicial Watch and the Heritage Foundation are examples. A large majority are businesses, whether profitable or funded by donors. Only 10 or 15, at the most, are sites of the sort that used to be called blogs.

In our earlier days, there was a lot of talk about citizen journalism. We haven’t heard much about that lately. The media landscape is somewhat more diverse than it was pre-internet, but amateur and semi-pro commentary on the news, and contributions to the news, have mostly migrated to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, where conservative perspectives are sometimes suppressed.

Call me a dinosaur, but I am one of those who would like to see a return to the “free” internet.

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