Mullings by Rich Galen | Issue for December 29,1999

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It's Been a Very Good Year

Wednesday, December 29, 1999

As this is the 96th and penultimate edition of Mullings for 1999 I want to use this space and your time to thank you for being part of something very, very special.

To answer a commonly asked question, the definition of the word "Mull" used to be the sub-head every day. It read: "Mull v. (1) to contemplate; to muse. (2) to add zest as to cider or wine." The typical column runs about 600 words and will fit on one page if formatted properly. In the old days, when blast fax was the principal method of distribution, this was a cost issue. Even though Mullings is now only distributed via the internet, the discipline has remained.

When Mullings first went commercial in August, there were about 1,500 people on the e-mail list getting two editions per week. The web page was getting about 1,200 hits per weekday. As I write this, the e-mail list stands at 10,150 and the web page is getting about 7,000 hits per weekday and about 3,500 additional hits over the weekend. There are now three editions per week.

Your support means Mullings has a weekly circulation of about 68,000 readers. That doesn't, of course, include the people who have Mullings forwarded to them by others.

Lee Rodgers and Melanie Morgan and their listeners at KSFO in San Francisco, Rob Engstrom at the RNC, and Grover Norquist at Americans for Tax Reform have been extremely helpful in helping build this level of support. Feel free to send along names of people you think might be interested in Mullings.

The sponsors have made this possible. Click on their links now and again, both in the e-mail version and on the web page. They have been a very stable group and took a flyer on Mullings when even I wasn't sure it would work. I believe Mullings is the only column of its kind on the internet - independent of any other publication and totally supported by advertising.

On publication days (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) I get over 150 e-mails not including out-of-office replies and addresses which have gone bad. I try to respond to everyone who writes - whether they are positive, negative, or pointing out an error. I am especially excited by those who comment on the final bullet point, meaning they have read all the way to the bottom which I, as many of you have noticed, sometimes don't do.

Mullings readers tend to be very smart; very clever; and very, VERY opinionated. This also goes for the hundreds of members of the news media who are on the Mullings distribution list and are no less shy about swapping thoughts and theories on political events and current culture.

Mullings first went on the road in August to cover the Iowa Republican Party's straw poll. Mullings was in Iowa several weeks ago for the third and final GOP Presidential debate of the year. And plans and reservations have already been made to cover the Iowa Caucuses and the New Hampshire primary.

I have been treated extremely kindly by the press corps on those occasions when I have ended up in the same place with them at the same time. The highest compliment I have received was in Iowa recently when, as I accompanied two very excellent national reporters into a restaurant for dinner, one stopped and said, "This is off the record, right?"

I have invented the best job I have ever had; maybe the best job ANYONE has ever had. Thank you for being a part of it and for making it possible.

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