Diary still growing

The Diary readership is again ploughing ahead and continues to increase, writes Brian Byrne.

There are now consistent running monthly page view figures of 21,000 and over, while the actual number for August was 22,489, compared to 15,024 in January of this year.

The biggest individual visitors day of the year so far was May 19, when Queen Elisabeth passed through Kilcullen. The top-read stories since January related to the River Festival, the recent runaway road paving machine, and the short-lived but fun-filled Celebrity Bainisteoir campaign (these are the stories which people clicked into from outside pages, and don't include those who simply read them as they logged onto the Diary in the normal way).

Popular features—on the same basis—include the review of 'Rosanna Nightwalker' in June and, oddly, your editor's piece on 'The Journalism of fear and loathing' written a year ago.

As far as pictures are concerned, the all-time biggest play of a slide-show goes to the Riverside Festival 2011 set, which has to date garnered almost 5,500 views.

The recent inclusion of audio pieces has also proved to be very popular, and we'll increase that (maybe it's my radio background, but I think people prefer radio-style audio to video, because it allows them to get on with other things while listening. Or maybe I'm all wrong. Doesn't matter).

Bottom line, whenever I think we must have reached the peak, the stats just keep on going up (bubble, anyone?).

Really, thanks everyone. For tuning in, for tips to stories and invitations to events. And, of course, to the local advertisers, who have already got the message—do support them. The Diary continues to be one of the really fun parts of my life.


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