French, Swoboda, McCowen & Others to File for Office Today

As expected, Elston McCowen has announced his intentions to run for Mayor from the Green Party. This will ensure that we all have a reason to return to the polls in April 2009 for the general election.  For more information see mccowan4mayor.com.   Term limited State Senator Maida Coleman is also expected to file today for the city’s top job.

Jay Swoboda announced his intentions to run for 9th Ward Alderman in a comment on this site.  Incumbent Ken Ortmann is known for being the only Alderman out of 28 that refuses to even accept communications via email.  The link from the 9th Ward page to email Ortmann simply says, “This alderman prefers not to be contacted via email.”  Nice.  Sorry but my courier pigeon has gotten tired.  My quill pen has run dry.  When Ortmann was first elected in 1999 did he say things like “I refuse to accept faxes.”  Do we need any stronger symbol of being completely out of touch?  Swoboda’s campaign website is here.

Blogger & political consultant Antonio French has announced on PubDef, Facebook & Twitter he is running for Alderman in the 21st Ward against incumbent Bennice Jones-King.  French was elected to the position of Democratic Committeeman in the ward in the Missouri primary last August.

I’m keeping a list of all candidates in the Spring 2009 election here.  Others may have filed but the most recent list from the Board of Elections is from November 25th.  They have failed us by not updating the list to reflect newer filings.  I assume others have filed in the last five weeks?  I have emailed them requesting a newer list but received no response.  I stopped by their offices on Monday but they couldn’t find an updated list.  I left my card asking for a list to be emailed or faxed.  Nothing.  They were busy getting new carpet installed during the last week to file for office.  Brilliant timing!

Congrats to those who have filed or who will file today!

Huge Traffic Increases in 2008

Last year saw huge increases in traffic.  Not auto traffic, web traffic here at UrbanReviewSTL.

The number of pages viewed in 2007 was just over 3.5 million.  Not bad and certainly a healthy increase over 2006’s 1.2 million page views and 2005’s 334,000 views.  For 2008 the number of pages was around 9.5 million!  This is a year to year growth rate of over 167%!

Considering there were only two posts in February, the numbers are remarkable.  I know from my survey that just over 15% of you began reading in 2008.  In a weird way my stroke was good for traffic.  People went to the site when they heard about my stroke and many stayed around to follow my recovery.

In 2008 I had a total of 305 posts – an average of 25.4 posts per month.  Take out February and I had an average of 27.5 posts per month.  In 2007 I had a total of 370 posts for the year (30.8/month).  I don’t have a good summary on word count but my posts are noticeably shorter thanks to one handed typing – and likely more read as a result of their brevity. The stroke was sort of that editor I never had.

2009 will be a good year on many levels.  I expect growth in page views but it is hard to predict at what rate.  Since starting this site in October 2004 the growth & popularity has been so far beyond my wildest expectations.

Thank you to all of you.  May you have a joyous 2009!

Huge Increases In Traffic in 2008, More Expected in 2009

Traffic increased substantially in 2008.  Not on the roads but here at UrbanReviewSTL.com.

In 2005, my first full year, traffic was a few hundred thousand page views.  In 2006 it reached 1.2 million pages.  Incredible!  For 2007 it shot up to 3.4 million page views.  And 2008?  An amazing 9.4 million page views!

I’m targeting 25 million page views for 2009.  I’m also predicting/hoping more local businesses will see the value of advertising on local sites such as UrbanReviewSTL.

Thank you to everyone for reading UrbanReviewSTL.  May you all have a spectacular 2009!   – Steve Patterson