You’re either in front of Guido, or you are behind…

The Daily Mail’s Right Minds, also known as the “Heffington Post“, has been going for a month now. It is getting sharper. Nevertheless some old inky habits die hard, newspapers like to pretend they are the font of all knowledge and will rarely acknowledge other sources. Guido is used to being referred to by newspapers as a mysterious unnamed gossip website whenever we are leading on some scandal the papers are too timid to touch. Only this week the NewStatesman’s niche-website ran a disingenuous rebuttal to our scoop about Dan Hodges exiting their magazine without either linking to or naming this blog. We put that bizarreness down to bitterness, it must be soul destroying working for a discredited low circulation, loss making left-wing vanity publication.

In the case of our friendly commercial rivals at the Mail and the Telegraph we can only presume they don’t get it. In the last month for every reader referred to this blog by the Mail, Guido sent them 14 readers, for every reader sent by the Telegraph website, Guido sent them 12 readers. This asymmetry is counter-productive, Guido suspects they still have the print mindset, where a paper is held by the reader and holds onto the reader from cover to cover. Online the readers know the next story is really just a click away, anywhere and everywhere.

All the research suggests that linking-out doesn’t just give readers a better service, in increasing the utility to the reader websites get more traffic when they press the back-key to return, you don’t lose many. The Spectator is the biggest referrer to Guido followed by ConservativeHome, we in turn send them a fair chunk of traffic in return. Linking works in our mutual interests.

This week 107,312 visitors made 304,358 visits to 483,322 pages. The top stories in order of popularity were:

• Overheard in the Midland Hotel Bar
• Hammond Twists the Knife
• Guardian Accuses Louise Mensch of Having Facelift
• Reality Check of the Day
• Dave’s Divas
• Boris: King of the Shaggers
• More Speeding Fingers Being Pointed at Huhne

You’re either in front of Guido, or you are behind…

This week 90,696 visitors made 253,372 visits to view 406,448 pages. The top  stories  in order of popularity were:

• Oborne Has Guilty €urophiles Squirming
• Vicky Pryce Not Happy With Huhne
  Her Lawyer Releases New Statement
• Sarah Teather Stand-Up Routine Bombs
• Psycho Huhne Checklist
• Moran Leaves Court in Tears
• Science is Never “Settled”
• Totty Watch: Sky News Top Trumps 2011
  Luciana Stays On Top – Chuka Came Second

Guido’s review of the first week back at school in Westminster will be going out to Guidogram email subscribers later. You can subscribe for free by clicking this link. You’re either in front of Guido, or you are behind…

We’re chuffed that Total Politics magazine readers once again voted Order-Order.com the top political blog. Thanks are due to the readers and fans who have voted us Britain’s #1 blog for the third year running. We’re so very proud to be the blog you love and they hate. 

We have had scoops large and small, gossip, fun, hounded Johann Hari and even broken some hard news stories to keep bringing in an average of 100,000 readers a week to find out what is really going on in Westminster. Last year we were happy to do our bit to bring down the deficit, this year we have done it again, putting Jane Pilgrim back to work on the front line as an NHS nurse not a full-time union agitator at the taxpayers’ expense. We’re cutting the deficit one non-job at a time.

Looking back on this year we’re pleased that we have increasingly focused on the  hypocrisy of the politico-media nexus. Apart from Private Eye we’re pretty much alone in covering this subject. Investigations like this Guy News edition, which sent Polly Toynbee and Alan Rusbridger into hypocrisy gymnastics:

As the papers remain pretty schtum we’ve been highlighting the pretensions and fears of the media. Almost all of the newspapers have been hacking and blagging away merrily over the years and it is our intention to make sure that the “Circular Firing Squad” happens and that the truth is revealed. It isn’t just one newspaper editor or rogue journalist, it is hundreds of members of Her Majesty’s Press who have been breaking the law. Though you wouldn’t know that if you just read the papers.

It won’t make us any friends, though we didn’t come to Westminster to make friends, and we have certainly achieved that objective. While we’re on the subject we may as well ask about the blogs that didn’t bark: whatever happened to all that nonsense about the left-wing blogs thriving in opposition? They now have full-time staff and union funding yet they’re still not getting cut-through. Despite the change of government, Guido’s still leading the opposition.

We can’t do it without you. We’ll keep digging, muck-raking and totty-watching as long as we have readers who support us. Thanks for your attention…

This week 124,543 visitors made 323,514 visits to view 518,612 pages. The top  stories  in order of popularity were:

• The Full Boundary Review
• Osborne Coke and Hookers Story Breaking Tonight 
• De Re “Louise”
• Schillings Send Out Legal Notices for Sir Stuart Bell
• PANIC-O-RAMA: BBC’s Vivian White Investigating Osborne, Cocaine, Hooker and Hacking Story
• Exclusive: Johann Hari Mails Back Orwell Prize
• FLASHBACK: Osborne Statement On Natalie Rowe Allegations

Guido’s review of the first week back at school in Westminster will be going out to Guidogram subscribers later. You can subscribe for free by clicking the link.

You’re either in front of Guido, or you are behind…

The FT’s cerebral editor Lionel Barber gave the Fulbright Lecture last night about media matters of concern to the chatterati (“The Future of News and Newspapers in the Digital Revolution“). Barber joins the chorus for a Media Standards Commission, with teeth, to replace the discredited Press Complaints Commission.

Of interest to Guido was that he wants the regulator’s remit to cover blogs:

Should the new system embrace new media such as the Huffington Post UK or individual political bloggers such as Guido Fawkes?  My answer is Yes, not simply in the interests of a level playing field but also because the distinction between old and new media are rapidly becoming meaningless in the new digital eco-system.  New media is moving into reporting. Old media is blogging and tweeting, and using social media to promote and distribute news and analysis around the world.

If bloggers don’t cooperate he wants “a statutory levy on advertising revenues for non-participants, with such levies being used to fund the new body”. Good luck with that, because it will require some extra-territorial innovations in international law. It is never going to happen, you’ll have to prise the keyboard out of Guido’s cold dead hands…

Guido always welcomes competition, but he barely noticed the Heffington Post slip onto the radar this morning. Clearly not willing to share Guido’s nominative pearls of wisdom, the Heff has gone with Right Minds as the name of the latest multi-author comment-fest. See what they’ve done there?

The other name put about was “Running Commentary” which could, pre-Olympics, have been mistaken for an athletics blog. Mail Political Editor James Chapman has been given a blog on the platform. Guido would like to congratulate him on being awarded the title of “Britain’s Best Political Blog” after just two posts, which reminds him of what Simon Heffer said about the internet in 2009: “while being possibly the greatest invention of my lifetime, is also a means of purveying rubbish.” Heffer’s wisdom once again standing the test of time.

Cruelly nicknamed by one hack as ”the Fired From the Telegraph Club”, the Mail have certainly rounded up some big hitters for the project. It does however just seem a bit like all the comment from the Daily Mail has just been put in one place…

This week 100,056 visitors made 298,909 visits to view 468,103 pages. The top  stories  in order of popularity were:

• Hari Confesses, Blames Depression
• Question Time “Paranoid” at Unpredictable Audience
• 38 Degrees Off Course
• On the Farm: David Miliband & Alistair Darling
• Moran Charged on 21 Counts
• The Honourable Member for Paris
• Guardian Journalist Questioned Under Caution

Guido’s review of the first week back at school, will be going out to Guidogram subscribers later. You can subscribe for free by clicking the link.

You’re either in front of Guido, or you are behind…