The Critics Respond, Part Nine
Sometimes the readers just make me laugh, and laugh, and laugh. Yesterday, I introduced a new writer to the B&B: Caroline Ellis, whose first The Truth About Caroline article is heading for five hundred comments as we speak. It's provoked some of the most anguished responses I've ever seen from our readers. As I've discussed in the past, comment count is not the same as reader volume; Caroline's article, like the articles we used to get from Doug DeMuro, have a very high comment-to-visit ratio. My Jane Brody article did half the comments but three times the views. It's amusing how some articles bring out the clicks and some bring out the comments. For years, wanna-be Internet traffic experts have searched for a way to predict readership from comments, but the answer is simple: you can't.
Half of the readers are under the impression that I'm sleeping with Caroline, so now is a good time to set the record straight: absolutely not. She's seeing someone with whom she is very much in love, and that someone is not me. Which isn't to say that we haven't partied a bit, and it's entirely possible that I've backed her in an impromptu performance of... um, cannot remember the song, I was halfway through a (small) bottle of Ketel One, but I definitely remember holding a guitar while she was singing.
Caroline's very smart and quite witty and I'm expecting good things from her. But she's just part of a new-writer tidal wave at TTAC; in the 24 hours surrounding this post we have contributions from Amanda Bauer, D. Alexander, Camaro Luke, and Philip Thomas on the site. The days where Bertel and Ed would simply use the site to drone on about Chinese business deals are long gone. Today we're offering the microphone to a lot of different voices. Some will stay, some will fade. That's just how it works.