TAPPED COMES CLEAN

Finally, some candor from the American Prospect. The Kuttner claim that they had 500,000 subscribers to their magazine has been reduced to 50,000. This discrepancy has been blamed on a reporter for the Boston Business Journal. They have also conceded that their claims of 450,000 unique visitors a month may be a function of counting unique visits as unique visitors, as I suspected. They promise to come up with a new number soon. But their server company advises that the new methodology (i.e. accurate counting) may “reduce the visit count quite a bit, but it is a much better representation of reality.” I can’t wait for the new numbers. Score one for blogging pressure: without me and Mickey on their asses, do you think they would have ever conceded error? Remember that when I first raised the question, they accused me of being a “creationist” because I couldn’t care less for empirical data. I’m too hardened to expect an apology, but if they haven’t reported real new numbers within a week, I’ll keep at ’em.