Sorry, I deleted my blogroll last night. It's Mickey Kaus's fault.

I put his new, Newsweek blog on the roll, then, trying to remove his old, dead link, I clicked a button that said "remove." Apologies to all whose links I've deleted. I'll rebuild it over the next few days.

Meanwhile, while I'm on Mickey's case, let me say that I hate the format of his new blog. There's one post a day, and you have to click through a separate page to see that there are multiple topics. So, on the main page, yesterday's post — there's no more recent post (get on it, Mickey) — is headed "Andrew Breitbart 'Pissed' at Glenn Beck?" And you can see the first 10 lines or so before clicking.

Do you click? Maybe not. Maybe you don't care about AB and GB. But if you do click, you get to additional stuff that's got nothing to do with AB and GB:  "why I can't get too worked up about GOP Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell's alleged ethics violation"... "the DREAM Act... a familiar tradeoff—compassion in the short term vs. preventing large social problems in the long term..."

So why are those subjects stuck where you might never see them? It's Mickey's old style of collecting in one continuous post what most bloggers would put up as separate posts, combined with Newsweek's format of limiting what is on the front page. That format is, I believe, motivated by a desire to boost page views. This turns something that was fun about Mickey's old blog — the rambling, gossip-column style of going from item to item — into bondage to Newsweek's commercial interests. Blech!

And the truth is, I didn't click through on Mickey's first post until just now — because I didn't bite on the first-page teaser: "Get Me More Sarah Palin! Her secret weapon? She gets hit on." Ah, I realize now that he's making the point I just made. He's grasping after page views. Ha. Anyway, on the inner page, he says:

--kausfiles on Newsweek won't be quite the same as kausfiles on Slate. My early New Year's resolution is to be a lot more interactive (e.g. responding to comments), a bit less insidery, and a lot more Instapundit-y--emulating the wildly popular Tennessee blogger who posts lots of short links to worthy articles by others. Please let me know how I'm doing.

Of course, Instapundit doesn't have comments — except on a very rare occasion when a Madison, Wisconsin revolutionary storms the gates — and I think comments will be great. But this post-page business that I can't stand is something Instapundit doesn't do. One reason we love to click on Instapundit is that there will be so much stuff there right in view, on the main page. Yeah, there are a lot of links, but the vast majority of readers don't click on any given link. He sends a lot of traffic to the people — like me — whom he links, but that's because so many readers go to Instapundit, not because everyone clicks. Why does he start with so much? Because there is so much there to be seen at the first click — exactly what Mickey is not doing.

You can go back to Instapundit many times a day and get your instant reward of something new right there. By contrast, Mickey's blog, with all the fresh attention it's getting for the first 3 days, still only has 2 posts — 2 paragraphs on that front page. That's negative reinforcement for clicking. You can say you want to be Instapundit-y (and therefore wildly popular) but you've got to give and give. You can't withhold. And if you are withholding because big media is hungry for page views, the readers — me at least — are the ones who will withhold.

ADDED: Lots of links on one page is also the charm of the Drudge Report. Talk about wildly popular. It's harder to stay off it than to indulge your addiction and check it out one more time.