Almost Famous

Stop the Presses column by Chris Graham
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Last week it was Sports Illustrated linking to a story that we did on Venus Williams visiting Staunton. This week it’s The Washington Post linking on a blog to a column that I wrote on the local elections.
Almost Famous, indeed.
“But you didn’t actually make it into the actual, you know, print publications of either one,” my nattering-nabob friend Eli pointed out to me when I mentioned it to him the other day.
“Um …”
“So basically you’re making a big deal about bloggers posting links to your blogs.”
“Er …”

I dunno – is that what I’m doing here?
I mean, it’s one thing if it’s PoliticsBob2007 letting his six readers a day know that he thinks that something that I wrote is of mild interest.
But … you know, the Post blog went as far as to mention me by name.
“Augusta Free Press writer Chris Graham’s ‘election day prognostications‘ focus on the three-way race for the 24th District Senate seat between Republican incumbent Emmett Hanger, Democrat David Cox and Libertarian Arin Sime.”
“Not impressed,” Eli said when I showed him the visual evidence.
Admittedly, the SI.com link didn’t mention me by name or The SportsDominion by name – but so what? Close to 4,000 people have followed the link to the story to the SD website as of this morning.
“Probably not a bad deal – considering that the guy who linked to it had to have read it and decided that he liked it,” mutual buddy Mordecai said in a rare break from his usual defense of anything and everything that Eli has to say critically of me.
“I hadn’t thought of that,” I said – but maybe that makes some sense.
Ditto for the blogger at the Post – it should feel good if nothing else that she read it and saw that it had some redeeming value.
“It’s more likely that she was just bored because it was Election Day, and nothing else was going on,” Eli corrected me.
He’s got a notion there.

Chris Graham is the executive editor of The Augusta Free Press.