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I ran into Darren Allen, of Hall Monitor fame unexpectedly on Saturday, at the R.U.1.2? Annual Dinner and Silent Auction at the Wyndham. I think he got tired of me introducing him to everyone as "Vermont's first paid journalist blogger." But he is!

And it sounds like his site is a success. Allen says that every time he posts something negative about the governor, he gets a response from press secretary Jason Gibbs in, like, five minutes. And he stirred up a hornets' nest last week with his — incorrect, it turns out — insinuation that Democracy for America canceled a press conference with Bernie Sanders because of a story in the Bennington Banner about Bernie paying his wife and step daughter for consulting services. Apparently there was actually a scheduling conflict (and is Bernie's reimbursement of their services really that big a deal anyway? He may be occasionally obnoxious, but he's no Tom DeLay.) Allen says he got lots of angry phone calls from the Sanders people and from DFA, so apparently he's got some influential readers.

Allen says the marketing people tell him 1000 unique visitors regularly check his blog, though he's not exactly sure what that means. He estimated that so far, his daily traffic high is about 2,500. That's a lot of hits for Vermont, peeps. Candleblog gets about 100 on a great day; I get about 30.

Allen also reports that no, he's not edited, and yes, he has posted live from the statehouse via wi-fi. So my Freedomworks press conference post was probably not the first journalist blogger posting from the statehouse. Alas, are there any Vermont journalist/blogging firsts still up for grabs?