On The State Of The Progressive Cafe - And Trump's Words On The Medal Of Honor

Rumors of our demise may be premature, but it's natural to respond to repeated defeats with change. Let's talk about this publication's future, then talk about Trump's thoughts on the Medal Of Honor.

Hello, friends!

Back on July 27th, I made a post that talked about how the Veepstakes might take a while. While I might have been wrong about how long it took, I’m definitely thrilled at how it went. Vice President Kamala Harris chose Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, exactly who I suggested.

Honestly, it’s just weird seeing the Democrats make good decisions, and it’s kind of refreshing.

This week, we’re talking about The Progressive Cafe itself - It’s health, it’s future, other ways you can catch my take on things, and my reaction to Trump’s thoughts on the Medal Of Honor.

If you want that reaction, and don’t want to read about The Progressive Cafe, itself, here you go - quick, easy, and make sure to follow the account!:

@jpohlmanwritingTalking about #Trump and his recent statements on the #MedalOfHonor . With a brief appearance and needed head-boop from Ariel the #Cat . #Politics #Military #catsoftiktok #fyp #foryoupage #greenscreen

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The State Of The Progressive Cafe

The astute among you may have noticed that, well, nobody was listening to us when I talked about the Veepstakes. And, look, I don’t honestly expect the President, or Vice President, or anyone that far up in power to be reading my stuff, right? This is national politics, not my once-upon-a-time hyper-local journalism beat where the Mayor and Trustees all knew me on sight.

I don’t imagine that the Secretary Of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, is likely going to read my article on the East Palestine crash.

But I did have to hope that The Progressive Cafe is going to grow, just as I do have to confess that, frankly, it hasn’t been growing, and I don’t have ideas for how to change that fact.

Here’s your open invitation to chime in!

You might think, “Well, Jesse, you haven’t published any articles lately.” And, true! My health took a mild hit (I’m okay, it was just some temporary stuff), so I wasn’t really able to focus on getting articles done in the last few weeks. But when I talk about “it hasn’t grown,” I mean it hasn’t grown for a long time.”

That pre-dates the Veepstakes article, which at time of my writing this only got 22 views despite being the front-page article for this Substack for weeks.

If it was just one low-turnout article, I wouldn’t be sweating things too much, but .

For context, here’s the last 9 articles we published. Of them, eight of the nine are by me, and one is by my friend and occasional co-conspirator Jamie Diamond. This data is for the percentage of e-mail subscribers who opened the e-mail they got; the number of total views the article got; and the number of new subscribers each article brought in. You can also see what comments and “likes” each article received.

I did some quick math and the average readership is 42.625 readers per article. Call it 43. That doesn’t sound too bad until you realize that this number includes people who clicked, read two words, and left. It includes people who didn’t finish articles. I’m not sure if it includes people who opened it multiple times - it might?

Now. You may be asking, “okay, but what’s your subscriber count?”

Now, you’ll have to forgive the 30-day views and 30-day open rate for being down; that’s because I haven’t published anything. That makes sense. But look at that number of subscribers: 43. We average a 31.778% open rate, meaning about 13.66 subscribers (so we’ll call it 14).

Here’s our Subscribers-Over-Lifetime, I.E. our total subscriber count over the long term.

So as you can see, we’re near - but not even at! - our all-time high. That means we actually lost some subscribers from our peak. We’re a publication that has been around for over a year and a half, and we have…43 subscribers. That’s it! That’s the number.

While I won’t pretend I don’t appreciate all of the support, the truth is that The Progressive Cafe has become an inefficient use of my time. Granted, one of it’s principal functions is as a place for me to ‘rant’ about politics, but…

Did you happen to see how many views my TikTok about Trump got? Over 650.

Now, some of the same analytics concerns apply: Many of these people may have seen the video come up in their scroll feed, watched for two or three seconds, then switched away. But seeing 674 views means the algorithm that governs TikTok is one that’s actually showing my content to prospective new fans.

And, see, the video got me new followers! I don’t have many, yet, but each solid video release seems to net a few new followers. I also get steady comments on TikTok! Many of them can serve as easy prompts for quick response videos, allowing me to make more stuff for people to engage with.

What’s more…Honestly? In many ways, making a TikTok about a topic is just easier than writing an article. Sure, I’m far from an expert at video making in general, but I can use a green screen well enough (in most cases) to cite a source, then make arguments.

But there are detractions. I positively hate doing web-based research on my phone, and I don’t exactly love TikTok’s layout. It’s a very slow app, to boot. It takes forever for anything to get done. Holding an object like a cell phone hurts my hands after a while. Typing on it is excruciating.

So What’ll Happen With The Progressive Cafe?

I’m not sure, and I am open to feedback in the comments section.

Part of me still wants to do deep dives into topics like charter schools/school vouchers. Part of me knows I could do it ‘easier’ on a computer, but I could also take that research and make a video of it.

I would imagine you may see more situations like this article, where I start off with a video then add additional thoughts. That’s certainly one option.

But I don’t want to write a Substack if there’s nobody reading it, because that’s just not helpful - and that goes double if there is a platform where people are paying attention that I could be working on, instead.

So, yeah, those are my thoughts. I look forward to yours, in case you have any insights.

Thank you for reading The Progressive Cafe.  If this article has helped you, please consider signing up for our mailing list.  This article is by Jesse Pohlman, a former hyperlocal journalist and sci-fi/fantasy author from Long Island, New York, whose website you can check out here.