One Year & Still Blogging. Part 1.

It has been a year since I started blogging in earnest. If you look at my archives, you will see that I began blogging in January of 2006, but that was a false start. There are only seven posts during the first three months of 2006. Then I quit, thinking no one was reading it.

I began blogging again at the end of October of 2006 and since that time have written over 400 posts. On May 14, 2006, I wrote a post about why I started blogging in the first place and on January 15, 2006, I wrote a post about why I chose the name Upstream for this blog.

Here are some highlights of my first year of blogging. (Tomorrow, I will look at the low points, followed by a third post on why I continue to blog and where this blog is going in the future.)

The Guardian, one of England’s largest newspapers, picked up and re-published part of a post I wrote on the Amish school shooting in Pennsylvania.

Power Cruising Magazine purchased a photo I took of the flood damage at Lock 10 on The Mohawk River and commissioned me to write a brief article for the magazine.

Ernie Tetrault interviewed me about this blog on his television show.

Thanks to some great sources, Upstream managed to actually publish some news, rather than just comment on the news. Our series on New York State Department of Corrections Officials misuse of their positions of authority is one example. Here is one post from that series.

I learned how to add photgraphs to the blog, most of them original, not stolen from other web sites.

Wrote a series of posts on Ralph Tortorici. This is one of my favorite series. Here’s one post from the series.

One of the most satisfying aspects of blogging is to be recognized by other bloggers, especially other Upstate New York bloggers. Thanks go to Albany Eye, Albany Lawyer, CNY Underground, Chris Rooney, Dave Lucas, Fault Lines, I-Saratoga, The Judge Report, Mohawk Valley View, NCO Blog, Northview Diary, Roman Hokie, The Troy Polloi and York Staters (hope I haven’t missed anyone) for recognizing the existence of Upstream at one time or another during the year.

Upstream had a one day record of 7,087 visitors to our wordpress blog site when I was posting about the Chris Porco Trial. Tomorrow, I will explain why this was a failure.

We had a one day record of 1,400+ visitors to our blogspot blog when I posted the now infamous Muslim cartoons. Tomorrow, I will explain why this was a failure.

Finally, I am happy that Metroland did not recognize Upstream as the area’s best blog. I’m inclined to think that it was in the pages of Metroland, not on the internet, that the Capital Region Skin Flute Band, which practiced regularly in the Macy’s restroom in Colonie until they were recently disbanded by the Colonie Police, found each other.