Adapted from an original post to Daily Kos
Daily Kos is booming.
With an average of 810,234 visits and 937,537 pageviews every day now (according to SiteMeter) Daily Kos has undoubtedly become the anchorweight for the national progressive blogosphere. It is a thriving community, home to thousands upon thousands of caring, patriotic Americans. [It has also spurred the founding and growth of new national, wonderful communities – like Booman Tribune].
This site has served its national audience well. But there is one huge area of the blogopshere that Kos does not serve very well – and that is politics at a local level.
Just nine months ago, a team of people, including myself, realized that we in the Pacific Northwest needed some kind of progressive counterbalance to local conservative megasites like Sound Politics (great name, bad logic).
We set out a vision and a blueprint to create an entirely new website to serve the regional progressive community. After just two or three weeks of development, we launched Pacific Northwest Portal, and announced its debut on Kos and a couple other sites, not knowing what to expect.
From its very first day, traffic was brisk and has remained steady, increasing inch by inch with each passing month.
In previous diaries [on Kos], I’ve talked about the inspiration for Pacific Northwest Portal and the sorry state of events (the Republican gubernatorial election challenge and P.R. blitz) at the time that gave us a sense of urgency.
What Pacific Northwest Portal has done is unify the regional progressive blogosphere and provide a central gateway to get reality-based news and views from across three different states.
For those of you not familar with Pacific Northwest Portal, here’s an overview of its major functions:
- It syndicates thirty of the region’s finest progressive blogs – thirteen each from Washington and Oregon, and four from Idaho.
- Provides a directory of ALL known progressive blogs throughout the region. In addition to the 30 syndicated blogs, there are 154 others listed in the Regional Blogs Directory, for a total of 184 progressive blogs.
- Provides a directory of major media outlets, with almost two hundred links to local newspapers and television/radio stations.
- It provides newsfeeds searching the mainstream media for political news.
- It contains a listing of all the regional Air America stations on every single page.
- It displays recent business and labor news, as well as traffic and weather information.
Today, we’re launching a new package of improvements to make Pacific Northwest Portal even better, and solidify its connection to Daily Kos.
One of our most important innovations is the new Highlights page. This new page is divided into two major sections – Today in the Pacific Northwest, and National Blog Headlines.
The “Today” section is divided into three subsections: Washington, Oregon, and Idaho/Alaska. Each subsection carries the latest eight blog posts (by state) from progressive blogs in our directory. Blogs that we already syndicate are excluded. So the Highlights page allows you to track the other one hundred and fifty blogs in our directory that weren’t already syndicated.
The “National Blog Headlines” is equally exciting, if not more so. It carries the latest four headlines from four prominent national blogs – Talking Points Memo, Crooks & Liars, MyDD, and – Daily Kos. But that’s not all.
As you know, Markos has invested significant energy in making Daily Kos a better website. Recently, tagging was introduced to better organize diaries. And now, Kos is providing an RSS feed for every user’s diary page.
We are one of the first websites (maybe the first) to take advantage of this new feature. We are now able to pull the latest diaries written by Northwest bloggers right onto the Highlights page, at the top of the National Blog Headlines section.
Now we’re not only tracking the blogs of local progressive writers, but we are also able to track diaries that members of our community post to Kos.
This new feature helps to cement the bond between Pacific Northwest Portal and Daily Kos. Both communities have much to offer to each other.
If you are a blogger in the Pacific Northwest and you would like us to track your diaries from the Highlights page, leave a comment below. If your blog is already syndicated by Pacific Northwest Portal, don’t bother because we already have you covered. Give us a link to your blog and tell us which state you write from.
Other improvements to Pacific Northwest Portal include significant updates to many of our pages, along with new graphics and a better navigation bar which provides access to more of our pages.
The Marine Green Update also introduces our first round of support for the state of Alaska. You can now find links to progressive Alaska bloggers (yes, they do exist) from our Regional Blogs directory. Posts from these bloggers will appear on our Highlights page (more on that below). You can also find major Alaska media outlets listed in our Northwest Media directory. Progressive Alaskans, take heart – you now have a home on the Web.
We have also launched a new Resources section, which provides convenient and established access to two of our major directories – the Democratic Party Directory and the Northwest Media Directory.
Follow the new Resources link from the navbar to reach these two pages. Below the directory links is our new Community Center, divided into three subsections. The “Join the Community” subsection provides tips to progressive activists who are thinking of starting their own blog. The “Become Active” section has an events guide, links to a few major technologically savvy progressive organizations, and an overview of regional Drinking Liberally chapters. The “Useful Information” subsection has research links for bloggers, including legal assistance, blog search engines, finding your state legislative/House/Senate district, voting and public finance records, and a media research/analysis center.
To see the release notes for all the changes we’ve made, follow this link. Or just head on over to Pacific Northwest Portal to see for yourself. And feel free to tell us what you think – we are driven by reader feedback first and foremost.