I'm monitoring our survey results from the BB31 Day 20 Challenge (Survey Your Readers). Here's what we've learned so far:
to tag (or label, as Blogger calls it) our postsWe're a little behind in our Better Blog Challenge assignments, so I took some time today to accomplish Day 20's task, which is to run a reader survey about my blog. As Darren notes, the best way to enhance and build your blog is to hear from the readers themselves. Our short, 5 question survey includes questions raised from our Day 2 challenge of running a first time reader audit.
Please, take a minute (literally, only one minute!) and take our survey. Your feedback is important to the enhancement of our blog!
Today our task is to analyze our blog's statistics; through Google Analytics, we have the ability to examine all sorts of data, including the number of hits our blog receives, the popularity of certain posts over others, where our readers are coming from, etc.
What I learned from our stats:
Our poll on "What is the Tavern League Talking About?" closes tomorrow, so don't forget to let us know what you think of when you hear "adult-only."
A Michigan-based group called the Wisconsin Association of Distributors put out a press release the other day applauding Assembly Republicans for deleting a proposed $1.25 a pack increase in the cigarette tax from Gov. Jim Doyle's budget.
This group didn't say anything about how a higher cigarette tax would discourage kids from starting to smoke and encourage adults to quit, and how having fewer people who smoke would contribute to the world's population problem.
That's probably the best argument against higher tobacco taxes, but it apparently didn't occur to the distributors.
Instead, they were worried that a higher cigarette tax would cost jobs.
"Such a large increase in the tobacco tax will simply devastate the state's wholesale and retail community," said Polly Reber, executive director of the association.
"We're looking at about a 30 percent drop in sales costing the wholesale and retail community more than $80 million. What will happen is simple: People will lose their jobs."
The Michigan-based association said economists had forecast that cigarette sales in Wisconsin would fall by almost 80 million packs, costing the state's wholesalers and retailers almost 1,200 jobs.
William E. Eggleston, my late father, picked up on that argument when it was made in the mid-1960s, after the first Surgeon General's Report on Smoking and Health.
My father reasoned that we know that smoking kills us, and quitting is the only sane thing to do, but those job losses would be mighty painful.
With a gift for satire that would rival Jonathan Swift, my father came up with a solution. The only patriotic thing to do, he wrote, was to continue buying cigarettes as though the surgeon general had never come out with his damning 1964 recitation of the harm smoking does. But instead of smoking the cigarettes they buy, my father wrote, people should take them home and flush them down the toilet.
We could still have the jobs — the good-paying jobs, our union brethren might add — in the tobacco factories, not to mention the less-than-munificently remunerative positions in the convenience stores. Temporarily there would be fewer good-paying jobs in cancer wards and funeral parlors, but hey, people will find new bad habits.
And there would be more very good-paying jobs for plumbers called out to fix all those clogged toilets. So America's economy would continue to hum along, and the health of the nation would improve, my father wrote.
It would be a win-win-win situation. Too bad my father never met Tommy Thompson.
It's been more than 40 years since that first surgeon general's report. People are still smoking cigarettes. The surgeon general has followed up his 1964 report with dozens more, each more damning than the last. And people are still smoking cigarettes.
But the reality of those reports — and the predictions that tax increases cut tobacco use — is beginning to trickle down to the powers that be in Washington.
The New York Times reports that leaders of the Senate Finance Committee have reached agreement on a bipartisan plan to raise the federal cigarette tax to $1 a pack. Republicans and Democrats in Washington seem to see eye to eye on more things than Democrats and Republicans in Wisconsin.
By the way, my father never actually quit smoking. But for many years he cut his smoking to eight cigarettes a day, only during odd-numbered hours. He couldn't have another cigarette if he stayed up late, guaranteeing that he wouldn't lose any sleep to the tobacco companies.
And until the day he died, he understood a specious argument when he heard one. Maybe if we all learned a lesson from him and laughed at all the specious arguments we encounter, the world would be a better place. There'd sure be a lot more laughter.
-- Rich Eggleston
Our task for Day 6 of the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog Challenge is to e-mail an "old timer reader." As Darren Rowse (the creator of the challenge) explains,
"Do you have readers that have been reading your blog since the ‘early days’ of your blogging? You know the ones, they’ve been commenting and contributing away to the point where they’ve almost become part of a the scenery on your blog.
These readers play a big part in making your blog what it is. Their comments are actually content that is being added to your blog, their involvement brings a sense of community and makes it a more vibrant place and their input adds to the knowledge base of your blog."
Despite our blog's young age of six months, Liz and I figured we have a few "old timer readers" who have been with us since the good ol' days of early 2007, and we could at least e-mail them and thank them for sticking with us. And then we encountered our first big challenge of the BB31 challenge: Darren referred to "old timers" as those folks whose comments have become the scenery of the blog, and who are consistently commenting and bringing a sense of community to the blog. Unfortunately, we were at a loss - we just don't have anyone like that. Liz went back and counted and we only have 26 comments on our blog TOTAL, 9 of which were written by Liz and Jennie.Recently the Tavern League released a survey claiming that there is support for exempting "adult-only locations" from a statewide smoke-free air bill. What qualifies as an adult-only location?
In Wisconsin, minors are allowed to enter taverns with their parents or guardians. Minors 14 and older may also be employed where alcohol beverages are stored, sold, or served. (Wisconsin Alcohol Beverage Laws summarized here.)
ven this information, what does the Tavern League mean when they ask survey respondents about exempting "adult-only locations?" They can't mean taverns. What do you think of when you hear "adult-only?" Strip clubs? "Novelty" shops off the highway? (Take our poll to let us know!) It's confusing, misleading, and insignificant to ask a question that relies on such a muddy definition. Confusing poll questions result in questionable results.
It's hard to believe we've been blogging since February! (I guess this calls for a six-month anniversary.) Amber, Jennie, and I have been talking lately about how to make our blog better and more helpful to you, our readers.
A recent post on Michele Martin's blog, The Bamboo Project, came at just the right time. She's taking up Darren Rowse's "31 Days to Building a Better Blog 2007" challenge and she challenged her readers/fellow bloggers to do the same. There are 3 goals of the experiment, 2 of which we're interested in here at SmokeFree Wisconsin:
The Tavern League would like you to believe that smoke-free laws slash profits for tavern owners, but the research proves otherwise. A new study published in The American Journal of Public Health found that neither selling price nor sales declined for bars in areas with smoke-free laws when compared to bars in areas without smoke-free air laws.
In other words, when smoke-free laws are enacted...
Some things stay the same
Selling price is the same
Sales are the same
Some things change
Workers are healthier
Patrons are healthier
What is holding our elected officials back from making this important decision for the health of Wisconsin?
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