Matthew
Yglesias suggests that the popularity of the online Guardian is partially a consequence of
its being villain du jour of the
right-hand compartment of the blogworld. I’m less than fully convinced. ABCE
Entertainment tracks page views for various UK websites, and (a) the
Guardian has the highest number of page impressions in a month they’ve
recorded, and (b) that number is over 67 million. The blog is big, but not that
big. For comparison, the Times, the Telegraph and the Sun all struggle to crack
30 million a month. Though to be sure, the last time the Financial Times was
audited, it had 55 million, and that was 12 months ago when the Guardian was
under 50 million. So maybe the Guardian isn’t the most popular online newspaper
in Britain, as it claims, but it’s pretty big.

Of course, not everyone reads the Guardian for its
politics. I just like the fact that they write about Australia a lot. That’s
true of many British newspapers, especially compared to American ones, but
since most of the Guardian’s journalists are descendants of the criminal class,
if not of actual criminals, they have a natural affinity with Australia.