Hickory Hound by the numbers

I've met a lot of people here lately that have a hard time with mathematics, because they have a complete lack of interest in anything related to numbers. That is one of the saddest states of affairs in this nation. If you don't understand math, then how do you think you are going to understand money? Money is math. I digress.

Last month there were over 6,000 unique views on the Hickory Hound. I have that set up in the most conservative fashion possible with the ISP statistic program I utilize, because with myself I want as realistic of numbers as possible.  I also had, in the month of October, 10,411 pageloads of the various articles that have been written over the past 5 years.

Now detractors are going to dismiss any numbers as small potatoes and that is their right. I think we all know that this site becomes more relevant each and every day. This is journalism. Unfortunately, the Old School media's journalism has become all about not upsetting the apple cart and about sales. Many of you have been supporting a system that works against you. A system that by its design puts you in a box. A quarter of the people that come here are the people that want to put you and keep you in that box. They come here to study the person they view as an enemy's playbook. The other three quarters are coming here to seek information they can't get elsewhere. They know that what they are hearing from the old school sources just doesn't feel right.

But when you put 6,000 unique views in October in its proper context, think of Hickory (proper) as being 40,000 people and the largest city in our neighborhood Charlotte (proper) as having a population of 775,000 people. So Charlotte is  19.375 times the size of Hickory when it comes to population. Think about a Economic and Political information resource such as the Hickory Hound that was devoted to Charlotte's issues. Comparing a per population number. of 6,000 unique views would equal 116,250 views in a month in such a scenario. That is the context in which you need to view the Hound's numbers. Not in some sort of static small potatoes mindset.

Speaking of which, Charlotte's population today is 775,000 and ours is right around 40,000. In the year 2000, Charlotte's population was 570,000 and Hickory's population was 37,000. In the past 12 years (2000-2012 rounded), Charlotte's population grew by 36% and Hickory's population grew by 7.5%. The numbers diverge even greater over the past few years. We know that the Hickory population grew in the AARP group of 55 and older. We can also see where those 18 to 44 year olds have moved to, can't we.

Moving Forward with Reality