A sincere thank you to the readers of Connect Savannah for voting me best local columnist and best local blogger in the alt weekly’s annual Best of Savannah poll.
I’ve been fortunate to win best local columnist for a number of years running for my work three days per week in the Savannah Morning News. There’s a feed with links to those columns in the right sidebar of this blog. A few comments about the popularity of my City Talk columns in the Exchange and, to a lesser extent, my Unplugged column (formerly Man About Town) in Do:
- I’ve been writing columns for 13 years. That’s a big help in any popularity contest. . .
- The Savannah Morning News has the largest circulation of any print product in the region.
- Since the SMN and other print publications cut staff during the recession, I don’t think there are any other columnists even writing three days a week.
- Readers love basic information — what’s new, what’s open, what’s closed, who did what when, etc.
- Readers love brevity. I think the most popular columns are the ones where I include several different blurbs.
- Over time, columnists can — at least with some readers — establish credibility to talk about a wide range of issues.
- I’ve heard columnists bemoan the difficulty in coming up with new ideas, but I’ve been tracking so many different trends and stories over the years that I find it pretty easy to come up with subjects for columns.
This is my first time winning Connect’s best local blogger vote, so I’m pumped about that. I started this site for a variety of reasons that I’ve discussed before, and it has become an important outlet for me. I sincerely thank you all for reading.
Connect’s Jessica Leigh Lebos won runner-up for both best local blogger and best local columnist. It seems to me that having the same two of us at the top of both categories is a clear indication that we have a dearth of Savannah-based blogs. I have in particular been encouraging others to start music blogs for a couple of years now.
By the way, I anticipate some changes — i.e., enhancements — to Savannah Unplugged in the coming weeks and months. More on that soon.
Thanks to all of you for reading and for your passionate interest in some of the topics covered here.
Cheers,
Bill Dawers
