Donklephant Turns 1
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in BloggingOh yes, it’s our “blogiversary.” What an awful word.
Not many of you may remember back in the olden days, but Donklephant started out as a blog in the now defunct Weblog Empire network. Under the watchful eye of blog impressario Duncan Riley, we were launched to much fanfare (press release, links on Instapundit and Yahoo!, etc.).
Now, initially Duncan wasn’t looking for a political blog for his new network, but I pitched him the idea for a centrist blog, a place where both sides of the aisles could come and feel comfortable debating the issues of the day. In fact, I even used the tagline “Big Teeth. Huge Ass. Surprisingly Reasonable.” in my email pitch. Apparently he liked it, because here we are and here we stay. Also, another bit of trivia, our very own Cicero designed the political cross-breed that serves as our mascot. Many thanks to him.
When we launched we had six authors. Myself, Montag, Michael Totten, Callimachus, Cicero and a humorist by the name of J. Thomas Duffy. As many of you know, Montag, Michael and J. Thomas are no longer posting, all for various reasons. Since then, we’ve added a roster of some of the most thoughtful moderate bloggers on the web, and a tip of the hat to them. They’ve made, and are continuing to make, Donklephant what it is today.
And then, there’s you: the reader. All told we’ve published 2,123 posts so far and you all have commented 10,372 times. And trust me, I’ve deleted enough comment spam to know that number is pretty close to being dead on. Without you, there would be no site. True, I’ve had to do a little house cleaning on rare occasions, but I think you’ll agree that the comments on Donklephant are among the most thoughtful on the web. Many thanks to all of you.
So what next? I have no grand plans per se, but with a country trending more towards the middle I can only guess that you’re going to see this little site get a lot more popular in the next couple years.
More than anything though, I just want to keep learning and writing.
I hope you do too.
best,
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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 13th, 2006 and is filed under Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
July 13th, 2006 at 4:46 pm
Oh yes, it’s our “blogiversary.� What an awful word.
Blogratulations! 8-)
July 14th, 2006 at 10:02 am
Has it been a year? Wow.
I remember the old days, when the logo was a mastodon/eohippus hybrid.
OK, maybe I don’t.
July 14th, 2006 at 12:06 pm
Old days? That was the donkey in diapers with the elephant snout right?
Donklephant has done really well for being around for only a year. You should be proud Justin.