It’s back-to-school week in Politicoland, with party conference season – traditionally the magazine’s busiest time – on the horizon.
And here at the New Statesman website, we’re undergoing a few changes, too. In August, we had record traffic figures yet again: 1.84 million unique visitors and 3.8 million pageviews (compared with just over a million visitors and 2.6m pageviews for the same month in 2012). That is down to our phenomenal in-house team – web editor Caroline Crampton, Staggers editor George Eaton, business blogger Martha Gill and economics blogger Alex Hern. Sadly, Alex is leaving us for the Guardian tomorrow, but he will be replaced by a dedicated Science/Tech blogger very soon.
We’re also saying goodbye to David Allen Green, who has been an outstandingly successful legal blogger at the New Statesman, writing on libel reform, the myths around the extradition of Julian Assange, the outing of the police blogger Nightjack, and many other stories. He will be taking up a role at the Financial Times, and we wish him all the best.
At the same time, we’re saying hello to two new hires: Sarah Ditum and Jonn Elledge. Both have written for the website for several months now, covering everything from the foibles of Iain Duncan Smith to why parcel delivery companies are so useless. Ian Leslie, author of the popular Marbury blog and the book Born Liars, will also be contributing a monthly online column.
You can also hear from our bloggers on our weekly podcast, which can be downloaded on iTunes, or from the website here.