Turner Report reaches 20,000 posts

The post I published a few moments ago detailing the possible dismissals of two Joplin R-8 principals is the 20,000th post in the 10-year plus history of the Turner Report.

As I have noted many times, the blog was a follow-up to a website I started in 2000 and which probably reached about 10 people a day. It was also difficult to maintain, so eventually I shut it down.

In 2003, I was so impressed by the writing ability of two of my Diamond Middle School students, Michelle Nickolaisen and Alicia Bradley, that I suggested to keep a journal of their high school years and perhaps at some point, write a book about their experiences.

The next day, they told me they had already started it, but each of them had decided to do it as a blog. I had no idea what a blog was. I had never heard of one. Once they told me that it was online, it was free, and it was much easier to maintain than a regular website, I was hooked.

I had always told my students that if I were going to make them write every day (and I did) that I would do the same.

And here I am, 20,000 posts later (and that's not counting the few thousand posts I have made on my other blogs).

The blog has changed considerably since October 2003. Back then, I had no idea what I was going to write about and it was more a hobby than a news site. That quickly developed, though it took much longer to develop a following. For quite some time, I was reaching about 35 readers a day. It continued to grow, helped by my decisions to start writing about education and state government, as well as numerous court cases.

More readers came after sampling my work in my writing for the Huffington Post and Daily Kos.

The blog exploded during the past year. Whereas, 10 years ago, I was lucky to get those 35 readers, I now reach between 5,000 and 6,000 readers a day on weekdays and 3,000 to 4,000 on weekends. On days when there are bigger stories, such as last year's murder of Adriaunna Horton of Golden City or the resignation of Angie Besendorfer, the numbers go well over 10,000.

So thanks for your support, those of you who have been here with me since the beginning and those who hae joined somewhere along the way.