The first post was made to this blog in January 2006. The site begins its sixth year chronicling Capitol Hill. In the beginning, the site was a hobby and covered only a small part of Capitol Hill. By 2008, it became my (second) full-time job and CHS had jumped headlong into the business of community news coverage. For those of you who have been with us from the beginning — and who joined this blog already in progress — this is an update on how it works and where it stands.

First, some signs of progress. This is a graph showing our weekly unique visitor totals since January 2007. We’re missing a year — 2006 — that wasn’t that interesting, trust me.

In total, 528,065 unique visitors came to CHS last year. 3,800 now follow the @jseattle Twitter account. 2,300 like us at http://www.facebook.com/capitolhillseattleblog. 3,700 used the CHS iPhone app. We paid 32 different contributors to post. 4,000 subscribe to our RSS by Feedburner.

In my past life, I worked at Microsoft for a decade and, most recently, on analytics. So, when I think of you, I think of a visitor. A unique one. Just like everybody else. My name is Justin — nothing new there as it’s on our About Us page (as are more analytics) but I’ve always written with the blog byline from my earliest anonymous days. Before Microsoft, I went to school to be a journalist and earned a degree in journalism. I left Microsoft to start a failed national network of local news sites. I have, in the meantime, proceeded to fail again at creating a different type of national network of local news sites. Let’s not try that again, shall we! In addition to managing and writing many of the posts here on CHS, I run http://seattleindieads.com, a local advertising network of independent news sites. This week, we’ll be writing checks for about $4,000 to share the network’s ad revenue across the participating sites. It’s a modest local success. Yay for that.

CHS is also a modest local success. The business is 100% advertising supported. In 2009, I couldn’t say that — I received a small grant for participating in local content partnership with the Seattle Times. There was no grant in 2010. To stay afloat and to support our existence, we sell advertising. You can view the affordable (we think) rates here. You can be part of the site for only $2 a day. Our goal is to be supported by the largest breadth of advertisers possible. If you’d like to make your message part of the site, take a look at http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/ads/setup/positions or give me a call at (206) 399-5959. You’ll save me a few dozen phone calls and e-mails over the next few months, too. Frankly, I could use the help.

We currently have 40 active advertisers on the site. Over the course of 2010, we featured messages from more than 100 different businesses, most of them local and independent.

If you’d like to help on the sales front, tell your favorite local businesses about the site and the opportunity it creates to reach people on a daily basis. With the growth of social media tools like Twitter and Facebook and the coupon craze around Groupon, etc., we’re seeing fewer and fewer businesses that “don’t advertise.” We’re glad to be able to provide these advertisers a strong community to be part of.

Most Commented 2010
What do we cover on CHS? Here are the kinds of CHS posts people engaged with most in 2010.

• Fraud wave appears to be hitting Capitol Hill credit card users — UPDATE
• Neighbor puts Volunteer Park Cafe in a pickle over plans for outdoor seating
• Cafe Ladro says nyet to your pet
• Scientology branch sets up (temporary) shop on Broadway
• Man killed with axe near 15th and Union

It’s not a bad snapshot of the year and our goals. The purpose of CHS is to report on and document life on Capitol Hill for the people who live here, work here and/or love it. We report on the openings and closings of restaurants not just because of wanting to have foodies from across the city read the site but because we want to help people — as much as possible — understand the changes in their environment. It’s how we approach crime. It’s how we approach development. It’s how we approach Waldo.

How the Site Works
CHS was built to be a community driven news site and that is kind of what happens. Anybody with an account truly can post — and often, people do. Here’s an example of a community post from the weekend that I had nothing to do with. It’s a magic feeling to see the site suddenly produce a piece of “news” I haven’t heard about. I like it.

The majority of coverage, though, is reported by me or paid contributors. Of the latter, we run through them. We can only pay so much and the best eventually move on. We are also lucky to have a great working relationship with the talented young people from Seattle U’s The Spectator who often join us as interns in the summer or as special contributors during the winter. Long story, short, we’re always in need of new writers. [email protected] if you’re interested.

Everything else is magic. I keep track of the comings and goings of Capitol Hill thanks to an army of faeries who watch our borders and keep track of Department of Planning and Development filings. A lot of information comes from you, too — either good ol’ [email protected] or calls/texts to the Bat phone at (206) 399-5959. I answer that line so don’t be surprised. No, I don’t know when _______ opens or closes. All tips and tidbits are welcome. Three or more cop cars, drop me a line. I try to write my posts in transparent ways that reveal how the information was gathered or collected — especially if there are “media releases” involved. Sometimes I’m squirrely and evasive if I have something exclusive that nobody else has reported — but even then I’m pretty clear about where stuff has come from. I do occasionally use anonymous sources. My first priority is to find a way to report facts that we have collected. My second priority is to foster and preserve community. Editorial judgements stem from there.

We moderate comments. Anything with hateful language or that is purely commercial is removed without question. We have low tolerance for argumentative positioning and trolling. If you are not from Seattle, we are doubly skeptical. Some comments will be removed automatically that trip specific flags. Others will removed at our discretion. Again, our goal is to foster community. This means some kinds of discussion are not appropriate for CHS. There is an entire Internet where it might find a welcoming home.

I make typos. I make more typos when I am more busy. I apologize for the sloppiness and thank you for politely bringing them to our attention.

The crow was created by a CHS reader who is also a designer who scolded me when I tried to hold a design contest for a new logo.

I often but not always start my day around 5 AM, currently.

I don’t really listen to music when I write anymore.

When and How You Visit
You come to the site pretty much all day long but the big peaks are midday. Here’s a graph of the hourly breakdown:

There are a variety of sources that drive you here. Many of you type in capitolhillseattle.com every time, bless your hearts, you Direct Traffic people. Many randomly pop through after searching for something vital that we happened to cover or Google, etc. says we have a good page for. I don’t know what to tell you about this other than everything in the pie could go away but the red and we’d still basically have the same business. We’ve never sold out our ad inventory. The extra traffic and traffic sources are a function, mostly, of our influence among those who are interested only in the Hill and could care less about CHS. We don’t think just anybody could attract this total audience — but it is also clearly part of something much, much bigger than our daily effort to cover one neighborhood in Seattle.

Thank you. And good night. And may God Bless the United States of America. What else do you want to know? We can continue this navel gazing in the comments.