The 20 Brave Souls of WPS News

By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News

Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — March 31, 2026 — 11:05 p.m.

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On any given day, WPS News gets about 20 readers.

Twenty.

Not 20,000. Not 2,000. Twenty.

And you know what? I’m actually fine with that.

Because twenty people is a classroom.

That’s not a crowd. That’s not a mob. That’s not a “smash the like button” circus. That’s a room with chairs. That’s eye contact. That’s someone raising a hand and saying, “Wait, explain that part again.”

I can live with a classroom.

The Mathematics of the Internet

Here’s the part that makes me laugh.

Between my two BlueSky accounts, I have roughly 14,000 followers.

Fourteen thousand.

That’s not nothing. That’s a small city council meeting. That’s a minor airport terminal. That’s a respectable slice of the internet.

And yet…

Twenty readers.

Some of you see the link.
You click the link.
You land on the site.
You look at the article.
You realize there are words involved.
And then you perform the ancient internet ritual known as the Sacred Back Button.

I respect it.

Sometimes the numbers jump. I’ll post a video and suddenly—boom—triple digits. A hundred people swing by. For about 45 seconds, I feel like I’m hosting the Super Bowl of Independent Journalism.

Then I check the actual article reads.

Twenty.

It’s like 100 people walked into a bookstore, nodded at the shelves, and left because nothing was on fire.

The Algorithm vs. Paragraphs

The internet trained you for speed.
I offer paragraphs.

The internet trained you for outrage.
I offer footnotes and context.

The internet trained you for 12 seconds.
I offer 1,200 words.

That’s not a complaint. That’s just reality.

I’m not built for viral. I never was. I don’t wake up thinking, “How do I trick the algorithm today?” I wake up thinking, “What’s true? What’s useful? What needs to be written down so it doesn’t disappear?”

I’m a writer.

I don’t do dramatic whisper videos.
I don’t do thumbnails with my mouth open in shock.
I don’t do dance trends.

I write.

The Classroom

And twenty of you show up.

Every day.

Quietly.

No confetti. No fireworks. No trending hashtags. Just steady reading.

That’s not failure. That’s community.

In a world of 14,000 casual scrollers, I’ve got 20 people who sit down and actually read.

That’s not viral.

That’s durable.

And honestly? It’s funny. Internet behavior is one of the great comedies of our time. Fourteen thousand people click “follow,” and twenty say, “All right, let’s see what he wrote.”

So to the twenty: thank you. You’re the classroom. You’re the regulars at the table. You’re the ones who didn’t hit the Sacred Back Button.

All joking aside, I appreciate you.

The rest of you?

I’ll see you when you’re ready to read.