DFO: It Was A Very Good Year

Despite the continuing struggles of the newspaper business to stay afloat, I’d have to put 2009 into the win column here at Huckleberries Online. It didn’t start that way, of course. As a result of the switch to a new system for S-R blogs, Huckleberries lost about 40 percent of its traffic, for a variety of reasons. The blog spent much of the early part of the year catching up to the big daily numbers that it had in 2007 and 2008. HBO topped 2 million page-views last week and is ending the fourth quarter on a pace for 2.5M. More than ever, Huckleberries today resembles the kind of cyber place that I envisioned when I started this experiment almost 6 years ago. On a coupla occasions during the second half of the year, I divided comments among conservatives, liberals, and neutrals, and took polls to calculate the political balance of the blog. It couldn’t be more balanced. Huckleberries has become a place where almost everyone is accepted and respected despite a wide range of political, religious, and philosophical views. Things can still get rough in the comments section. But nothing like the old days. We’ve come a long ways, Berry Pickers. But we have a ways to go yet. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year/ DFO .

Question: Any well wishes you want to give other Berry Pickers here?