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Jessica Cutler search engine traffic

There has been a huge jump in the number of people finding my blog, and it's because my blog comes up on the first page of the most popular internet search engine when people search for "Jessica Cutler". If this keeps up, I might even have to upgrade my hosting plan. (My blog is hosted at Netfirms. Luckily for me they have recently signficantly lowered the price/bandwidth ratio.)

What's interesting is that so many people are searching for her blog despite the fact that the story has had barely any coverage in the conventional news media. Only people reading today's Reliable Source column in the Washington Post know to search for her name, unless they have been reading about her in the blogosphere.

"Nick Berg" was the most popular search term last week, yet the news media gave us much less coverage of the story than the prison scandal. Now we have another story emerging, that people clearly want to read about, based on the high number of the internet searches compared to the small number of people who know about the story, yet it receives close to non-existent coverage in the conventional news media. This another exmple of how blogs are filling in the gap and providing information unavailable in the conventional news media.

In fact, this is a story created by blogs. The only reason there is a story is because Jessica created a blog, and then Wonkette publicized it. And her blog (now archived here) deserved publication because it provides an inside look at Capitol Hill that the conventional media would never in a million years have given us on its own.

Will the Washingtonienne sex scandal become a big story picked up by the news media in the coming week, or will it simply die? I think there's a good chance that we are seeing the beginning of a big story. Yes, all the people in the story are "nobodies," but it involves sex and Washington, and that's clearly something that people are interested in. Add to that the salacious detail that a government official appointed by President Bush is paying a 24 year old Senate Staff Assistant $400 for sex, and we have a story that people want to read about.

posted Sunday, May 23, 2004