The State of New South Essays 2025

I don’t know if you’ve noticed but the Year of Our Lord 2025 is waning.

With five days to go, we’ve reached that magical time of year between Christmas and New Year’s when the writers at all the media companies want to take some time off. So instead of covering actual news (they leave that to the poor rookies who don’t have any vacation time), the online purveyors of content like to do year-in-review posts they can have on hand in lieu of publishing anything that’s actually compelling.

So in that spirit, for the second consecutive year, I’m here to reveal how New South Essays is performing statistically in the State of New South Essays. In this post we’ll explore together the trends and unearth the fascinating stories behind the numbers.

And I know you people love numbers. You know how I know? My state-of-the-art statistics engine powered by JetPack^TM tells me so. Last year’s State of New South Essays post published on Dec. 28, generated 77 views, 14 likes, seven comments, 106 email opens for a 52% open rate making it tied for 219th most read New South Essay of all time. (See how fascinating this is!)

If I’ve learned anything in my 55 years on this planet, it’s that when something is ranked 219th it must be super popular and people want more of that thing. (I do have a MBA with a concentration in marketing, after all.)

So strap in. We’re going to take a deep dive and be amazed at what we can learn about New South Essays from this year’s report. (My only regret is that I do not have an accompanying PowerPoint…)

The state of New South Essays is strong. If you don’t believe me, believe the statistics (and we all know how famously reliable statistics are.)

Since this blog was born in 2011, there have been 346 posts in the New South Essays media empire, generating more than 105,000 views by 64,644 visitors leaving 658 comments (656 of which are my mom saying, “That’s such a nice article, dear. I’m so proud of you!”)

In case you don’t remember that fateful day on July 28, 2023, and are wondering why it was such a big day for New South Essays traffic, that’s when I gave internet sensation and all-round Southern influencer Landon Bryant the “New South Essays Bump” in popularity and told y’all “you might could” follow Landon because he’ll “bless your heart.” (Or, maybe he mentioned New South Essays to his Instagram followers. It could have been the other-way-round to how I remember it.)

Either way, let’s just acknowledge that there may be some overlap between our audiences and when cultural icons like New South Essays and Landon Talks collide its bound to generate a Southern cataclysm.

But since New South Essays began posting in 2011, the post with most traffic by far was 2012’s “Want to stay cool? Wear more clothes” with 13,021 views. I don’t know about temperatures, meteorology, science and such, but this clearly proves global warming.

The most read post generated in calendar year 2025 with 320 views is the tell-all exposé on why I left Oglethorpe University to join the Georgia Student Finance Commission back in June. As Landon would say, y’all do be nosy. New South Essays readers are nothing if not nosy… but not in a judgmental way. The more sordid details, the better, as far as you people are concerned, as evidenced by the strong performance of last week’s The Official Wallace Family Christmas Card Letter 2025.

Here are the other top performers this year:

The strength of my Oglethorpe job change post caused June to be the strongest month for New South Essays all year. It would appear that New South Essay fans are summer readers because all of my content performed well relative to the rest of the year in May, June and July.

Before I go any further and be accused of burying the lead, the overall summary of this year in terms of posts and shares and comments and such is as follows:

As you know from kindergarten, there are 52 weeks in a year. This chart reveals I slacked off for seven weeks this year, choosing to share previously posted essays rather than generate new content. I can do that now that I have 14 years of posts to draw upon. Admittedly, not all of those are worth resharing, but for those who need your weekly fix of New South Essays on Saturdays, it can help you get by.

What’s interesting to me about my web traffic data is that it does not count those of you who subscribe and read via email. Those metrics are kept separately. While I’ve hovered around 200 email subscribers for some time, I am currently at 196. I don’t know what I said that could have offended two people, but I am down from the high point of 198 just a few months ago. It is worth noting that at this time last year I had 181 email subscribers. Clearly, by adding 17 net new subscribers, New South Essays is going viral.

Another fascinating tidbit is the growth of New South Essays’ international following. Once again, Americans make up the largest demographic of readers, but look who came in second…

Now I know there a heap of folks in China, which is why I’m sure they are well represented here, but I like to think it’s because word is spreading among the Chinese that if you really want to know what the contemporary American South is truly like, you have to check out New South Essays.

With a total population of 1.4 billion, 4.97142857 × 10^-5% read New South Essays, according to my calculator. That’s a number so impressive I don’t even know if it’s small or large. I like to think it’s large, so let’s just leave it at that.

The real story of New South Essays in 2025 is the growth of daily readership driven by organic search engine referrals. As I explained last year, I am doing all kinds of behind-the-scenes alt tagging and keywording to make this content more appealing to the bots who scrub the internet and make recommendations (New South Essays loves robots and thinks AI is really cool!)

I am not above pandering, and it’s working. These two charts show monthly total views and monthly average daily views:

This blog’s second year of publishing, 2012, was the high water mark for both total readership and average daily leadership, but in 2025, the average daily views for the year matched that lofty figure of 32, up from 31 last year and 26 the year before. I’m not all that mathematical, but in my layman’s perspective, that’s a positive trend line.

And that’s my chief takeaway for 2025. I may not make the world a better place in the aggregate, but I can reach out and annoy… er… entertain 32 people a day with my unique brand of Southern-inflected wit and charm. This is a labor of love that contains its own reward.

Thank you for helping to build New South Essays into the cultural phenomenon and media juggernaut that it has become. Your support means everything.

Please keep reading, liking, sharing, commenting and subscribing, and above all, have a great 2026!

Are there any topics you’d like New South Essays to address? I promise not to send a reader survey if you’ll just leave a comment below with your ideas. Like PBS, we couldn’t do this “without viewers like you.”