Adam Pagnucco has his annual report on traffic for local and political blogs in Maryland for 2009. Inside Charm City is #1 in the local blogs category and our traffic is higher than any blog in both categories. He tracks our traffic as increasing 195% from 2008 to 2009.

Thanks to our readers for making this happen. 2009 was a great year for Inside Charm City.
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Inside Charm City finished 2nd in Maryland’s politically influential blogs 2009 compiled at monoblogue. Our rank in 2008 in the same category was 17th. As Michael Schwartz notes, “The caveat on Salisbury News is that it built up a nearly insurmountable lead early on but Inside Charm City actually performed better in the latter half of the year.”

The following traffic figures are from Maryland Politics Watch. Adam also provides the Top 10 list of politically oriented blogs and if you merged the two lists, Inside Charm City would still be #1.

Local Blogs, Site Visits 1/09-10/09

1. Inside Charm City: 267,283
2. Rockville Central: 92,498
3. Just Up the Pike: 88,869
4. Tales of Two Cities: 65,690
5. Rethink College Park: 33,064
6. Oceanshaman: 31,721
7. Track Twenty Nine: 21,669
8. Silver Bee: 7,851
9. Baltimore John Watch: 7,791
10. The Greenbelt: 7,028

Inside Charm City has also had the largest percentage growth among local blogs from 2008 to 2009 based on MPW’s numbers. They also have the same numbers for political blogs and once again we would top the list if both were combined.

Top Local Blogs, Percentage Change in Site Visits, 1/08-10/08 vs. 1/09-10/09

1. Inside Charm City: +194%
2. Tales of Two Cities: +185%
3. Rockville Central: +86%
4. Track Twenty Nine: +77%
5. Just Up the Pike: +53%
6. Oceanshaman: +17%
7. Rethink College Park: -25%
8. The Greenbelt: -25%
9. Silver Bee: -27%
10. Baltimore John Watch: -57%

These numbers don’t include the small number of independent blogs that don’t publish traffic data. Most mainstream media blogs also fall into this same category.

The Maryland Democractic Party has a new blog that has yet to debut. Currently it just has a RSS/Twitter link and a form to sign up for email that notifies you when it is up.

The blog name is The Online State and it will be at http://www.theonlinestate.com/blog/.

Matthew Hay Brown of In Good Faith has a report that Monsignor Dennis Tinder of Immaculate Conception in Towson is retiring due to major health issues. Tinder was criticized by parents and students at Towson Catholic H.S. this summer for closing that school.

The Sun has moderation on their comments on their blogs that is normally controlled by that blog’s author. They can either approve a commenter’s post every single time or they can approve that commenter for all comments in the future. However, I would think “Anonymous” comments would not be on the pre-approved list of any blog.

One of the comments:

GOOD! This man has no heart!

Another comment:

Too little, too late. And Tinder is lying, he didn’t do squat to try and keep TC open - he’s lying and he knows it. Justice is a beautiful thing.

Both of the above comments were responded to by other commenters taking them to task for it, but so far Brown has had no comment on the questionable comments either in that post or additional posts he has made since then on other subjects.