Howdy, folks! Like Jim Anchower, I know it’s been a long time since I rapped at ya, but now that Popdose is a whole year old, I figured now would be as good a time as any to rekindle our big old Internet friendship.
If you aren’t a longtime reader of this space, you may not even know who I am, so let’s start with an introduction: My name is Jeff Giles, and I’m the editor-in-chief of this establishment. Popdose rose from the ashes of my old site, Jefitoblog, after it was cruelly eaten by a ne’er-do-well hosting company by the name of Jatol (which is, I believe, Latin for “motherfucker”). I was all set to cash in my bloggin’ chips, but due to the gentle persistence of some friends and colleagues, I asked some of my favorite writers if they’d be interested in joining forces. Voila! Popdose was born.
Anyway, the thing is, Jefitoblog was basically an accident. When I started the site in 2004, I was five years removed from a career in music journalism that had seen me go from a young, wide-eyed music fiend to a jaded, not-as-young crank in the space of a decade. Jefitoblog wasn’t supposed to be a continuation of that career — it was just a lark, a way of talking about music with people who loved it as much as I did. I really only had my own domain because I couldn’t track stats through my LiveJournal account — and I’d only opened that because there was no other way of leaving comments on my old friend Ben’s journal.
And now look at us. Hell, Ben writes for Popdose now! (He’s the man behind our excellent Test of the Boomerang series, which would be one of my favorite weekly reads even if I wasn’t involved in publishing it.) In just a dozen short months, our cheery gang of pop culture mavens has steadily expanded its ranks and its stats, to the point where we are now reaching over 5,000 unique visitors a month — and over 3 million hits. To celebrate our birthday, we’ll be giving the site a facelift, turning the front page into more of a magazine-style table of contents that will allow us to give you easier access to the heaping loads of awesome content we’re churning out on an hourly basis.
All of which brings me back to my point, which is that it’s been a long time since I rapped at ya. Getting Popdose off the ground has been no easy task; without our army of terrific writers, and the tireless assistance of Senior Editor Robert Cass and Managing Editor Jason Hare — not to mention innumerable instances of above-and-beyond aid from everyone on the staff, as well as the vital backing we’ve enjoyed from our benefactors at Pressing Needs — it would have been simply impossible. A lot of hours have gone into the more than 2,800 posts in these archives — hours that have slowly but surely kept me from doing what got me here in the first place: talking about music with people who love it as much as I do. When Jefitoblog went off the air, I was posting twice a day; these days, most of my work for Popdose is behind the scenes. I’d like to change that a little.
So here’s the deal: from here on out, I’ll make it my business to communicate with you guys via an ongoing series of Letters from the Editor like this one — letters which will address a wide-ranging variety of topics, just like I used to. It’s my plan to get them out on a weekly basis, but I know better than to make promises I may not be able to keep. Point is, you’ll be hearing more from me in ’09 — and oh man, the site is going to get even better, just wait and see.
See you soon!
