Local News Drives Blog to Million Views Milestone

This blog crossed the million-views mark sometime on 

June 14 with a post about delays in the replacement of

the Keim Street Bridge.

When you've covered the Pottstown area for nearly 20 years, you get an idea for what interests readers here and what doesn't.

(20 years will be on Nov. 7 of this year)

So it came as no surprise to me that the posts that put this here Digital Notebook blog over one million views were two back-to-back posts about two of Pottstown's favorite subjects -- parking and the Keim Street bridge.

Or perhaps I should say subjects Pottstown loves to complain about.

Before I wrote them, I noticed I still needed about 10,000 views to reach the million mark, and figured it was a few weeks off at least.

But the parking post garnered almost 2,500 and the bridge post nearly 9,000, so there you are.

There is no better example I can think of to drive home the point that local news matters. No one in Arkansas cares about the long delays in replacing the Keim Street bridge.

But here in Pottstown, another delay was news enough to draw nearly 10,000 eyeballs.

I am mindful of this milestone in that its significance is only what we place on it. Any mathematician worth his or her salt will tell you the difference between 9,999,999 and one million is simply one more.

Nevertheless, humans have ever looked for ways to measure relative progress and the same mathematician would also have to concede that 1 million views is 999,999,999 more than the first view on the first post.

That was 1,842 posts and 67 months ago.

It was Nov. 9, 2011 when I launched this blog. To this day, that post, titled "Hello and Welcome," has received exactly 66 views. Not exactly a bold and exciting start.

But in looking back and reading it, I find the mission has remained largely the same -- local news.

The motto at the top "All the news that don't fit in print," applies as much today as it did then.

Space in the print newspaper is not infinite and some things just don't get in. In our heyday, local newspapers were pages thick and things like local school awards or special programs at the local arts center or historical society had their place.

The success of this blog (if one million views is to be interpreted as such) suggests that has not changed. Whatever else people may think or feel about The New York Times, The Washington Post or CNN for that matter, they still want to see pictures of their kids doing well.

What's more, they want other people, their neighbors preferably, to see it too.

And like the newspaper, that's what this blog provides, a platform and delivery method to get local news to your neighbors.

I was reminded of this important lesson early on.

The first couple posts were written pieces about land preservation, a local political endorsement in a national election. Important certainly, but not the sort of thing people turn to a local news blog for.

Yes, I indulge myself writing about those types of subjects when the spirit moves me. But when I saw that the fifth post received a whopping 329 views (respectable even by today's numbers) it was obvious I had to ask myself why.

The answer was just as obvious.

It was about local people, specifically an announcement of a performance of "Mother Goose," at Pottsgrove High School.

In 2014, when the company still cared about such things,

Digital First Media issued this Blogger of the Year award.

The chance that announcement would make it into The Mercury before the
show was slim. But when I posted it in this blog, it reached 329 people largely, I believe, because it included pictures of the student performers.

There's a reason that the joke about local newspapers is that the typical headline reads "Local boy makes good."

Because that's exactly what it should say.

As Tim Gallagher, Pulitzer Prize-winning editor wrote in a June 16 post in Editor and Publisher, local newspapers:

"are vital in their community because many are the only source of local news. While national media struggles with claims of bias and fake news, they are trusted by their local communities who rely on hard

copies of the print edition. Small market newspapers are a beast entirely different from their metro/national counterparts — in terms of their communities of readers, their advertisers, and their content. Local journalism is rooted in a specific community in the way that national journalism cannot be.”

He was citing soon-to-be-released studies by researchers at the University of Oregon and the University of Virginia who looked at local papers with circulation

under 50,000. By the way, they comprise 96 percent of America’s 7,071 daily and weekly newspapers.

A key finding of the studies, Gallagher reported, is the unique nature of local journalism:

“These papers understand that they are a part of and not separate from

their communities, and with that comes a level of responsibility to doing your part to help the community succeed (again, without compromising journalistic integrity). It’s a challenging balancing act and we do not give nearly enough credit to those reporters and editors whom perform it.”

For more than 30 years, I've worked at local newspapers and despite their eternally scarce resources; their small town entanglements, their often-underestimated value, I know the importance they have to their communities, even if the community doesn't always.

"The proof," as they say, "is in the printing," or, in this case, the blogging.

Local news matters to the people who live locally.

This old dog has learned a few new digital tricks.

And what matters is more than just Johnny starring in the school play, which, as the father of this year's salutatorian at Pottstown High School, is not something about which I am ever dismissive.

But local people also want to know what is going on with their local government.

This blog lumbered along under its own power, reporting select items from local meetings too small to garner a newspaper headline, along with the announcements and the goings on at local schools and community organizations.

But the boost in views it received from live-Tweeting meetings is undeniable.

After I adapted my reporting methods to live-blogging local government meetings (and just about everything else), I found a way to gather them the Tweets together and post them in the blog the next day.

Although we can't always get that night's news into the next morning's print newspaper, this was a way to do exactly that, as well as include things that would not normally receive a headline.

For example, I often Tweet out the amount of the month's bills for the various boards I cover when they are announced. That would never generate a news story unless something unusual was going on, but it is public information that, I have found, people are interested in knowing.

It also provided a level of reporting transparency to the community: These were the things that happened, but we will be writing about just a few of them in the newspaper.

I have met many people who get their local government news almost entirely from my Twitter feed and don't get The Mercury, something I need to convince them is in error.

But those who don't use Twitter can see it all gathered together in the next day's blog post.

This combination of ease (and the fact that its free) has driven views significantly like some sort of evil news scheme.

There are two other relevant factors in our success and both have to do with circulation.

The blog, sitting on its own in the World Wide Web generates few views. After all, the blog has only 32 direct followers and one of them is my dad, so that's not getting you to a million views in five years.

The two things are, Facebook and John Armato.

In The Mercury newsroom, we can see the views on our web site shoot up as

soon as we post something on the newspaper's Facebook page. For reasons people smarter than me will have to explain, it's the platform our readers prefer.

Twitter may have a wide reach geographically, but when we want to drive local traffic we just post it on Facebook. Needless to say, I try to make sure the day's Digital Notebook post is one of the first things our readers see there.

In 2012, John was named the Pottstown Rotary Club's

Citizen of the Year.

As for John Armato, as most of you already know, he is the Pottstown School District's director of community relations. He is also the ultimate community booster and, he likes to collaborate.

Over the years, he has sent me countless press releases with an accompanying photo and helped to fill the pages of this blog.

I make it a rule to always inform the reader that the post is taken, usually verbatim, from the release the district has sent out, everything from the local ROTC successes to the epic travels of Pottstown's ubiquitous Trojan Man mascot.

If he sent these press releases out as simple emails to his impressive email list of community and educational contacts, they might get read or they might not.

But one of the strange this about this business is when he sends the same information out as a link to a blog post, it gets people's attention.

As a separate engine of local information, run by a journalist, the information seems more authenticated to readers, one step removed from bragging and one step closer to reporting.

This email cycle was an early booster to this blog's and remains a key element to its success and I thank him and enjoy the partnership tremendously.

It's a win/win because my views go up and more people see the good news about Pottstown Schools he is forever working to promote.

One more thank you and I'll shut up.

Thanks Nancy.

Former Mercury Editor Nancy March encouraged me to start this blog and convinced me to use it to focus on local news and less on opinion, which was my first intention.

As always, this was good advice from someone else who has, for her entire professional life, understood the importance of local journalism.

She should feel free to take this one million views milestone as further evidence that she has always known what she's talking about.

365, 12, 7, 24

Well Friday marked another milestone in the life of this Digital Notebook blog of mine.

That was the day that marked a full year of daily posts.

It was on Feb. 1 of 2012 that I began my experiment of seeing if I could post something every day.

The experiment has proven its possible and, often enough, exhausting.

"Why would I do such a thing?" you ask.

Stupidity?

Stubbornness?

Curiosity?

Yes.

To be honest, the real reason was fear.

Like a lot of guys, I don't like facing uncertainty sitting on my hands. I like to try to do something to address it, face it, possibly affect it.

And, as many of you likely know, the company that owns The Mercury is in bankruptcy for the second time in the 15 years I've been here.

Now this particular bankruptcy has more to do with shedding debt and selling ourselves to a newly created "stalking horse" subsidiary, than crash and burn financial distress -- but still....

Newspapers around the nation are closing, reducing days of publication or trying to go the full digital route.

Anyone who has been paying attention knows that journalism is going through a major transformation. The key question is: "Into what?"

Easier to answer is the cause -- as it always has, it's technology that is bringing about this change.

It was the printing press (combined with an burgeoning education system) which transformed reading from a magical skill understood by a few learned monks and aristocrats to the next big thing in mass communication since the town crier.

It was a reliable postal service which made it possible for the founding fathers to keep the public informed enough about what was going on elsewhere in the Republic to establish the geographically largest successful democracy the world has ever seen.

(Newspapers from one city were shipped to another, where they were gleefully cut up and the news stolen for re-publication in the new location.)

Cheap newsprint and even better public education made penny newspapers ubiquitous in major cities and then radio made news and communication instantaneous.

Television provided the instant images and the TV news anchor was born.

But throughout all of it, the people who controlled the technology controlled the information.

Not just anyone could buy a printing press, a radio station, or television network.

Throughout it all, there were professionals who decided what was important enough to tell people and, in an information market, what they wanted to know.

What this latest wave of technology has changed fundamentally, I've come to understand, is that anyone can use it. No longer are the decisions about what and when information will be provided in the hands of a few, trained professionals, often called "the gate keepers" in Journalism 101.

Anyone can start a blog, for example, and many, many, many have.

In the information marketplace, those with the best blog, best tweets, best Instragram, Tumblr or Pintrest pages get the most readers.

This is neither good nor bad, it just is.

Well, to be more precise, it is both good and bad.

On the good side, Pottstown does not have just three reporters anyone; it potentially has thousands albeit part-time.

This means when a storm hits, we can get information from people all over the place; what's flooded, what roads are closed, where the is power out. That makes for better instant information.

It also means that stories we may once have ignored can be presented by readers, or at least that readers can advocate for their publication. In other words, it makes it easier to "give the people what they want."

On the bad side, few of these people have any kind of professional experience.

They are free to post anything they please; rumors, calumny and even outright lies, and they may well have agendas and motivations for what they are doing which are more than just a desire to inform the public.

Worse still, they can do it anonymously. Unlike professionals, they often are not accountable for what they write or broadcast.

Also, because these new digital newsies rarely make money doing it, or enough that they can do it full-time, what they produce is often a sideline and rarely sustainable over the long-haul.

A lack of consistency works primarily to the benefit of those in authority. They can just wait out someone nipping electronically at their heels in the reasonable belief that soon enough, they will just go away.

(Joe Zlomek's Sanatoga Post is the admirable exception to these observations and I continue watch with interest how his model is growing and succeeding.)

Now I've used the word "professional" a couple times here and I should note that like any industry, journalism needed a shake up.

For many journalists, the idea that you are pursuing and presenting the truth as best you can discern became a belief that because they say it or write it, it's automatically the truth.

Add on the awards that journalists like to pat themselves on the back with (hey, if we can't get rich at least we can pin medals on our chests) and you have a recipe for eventual upset. Any market hates complacency and we were long overdue for our wake-up call.

Having a lot of upstarts scoop you, come up with business models that make yours look like a steam engine and surf the fast-changing wave of technological changes with such skill that you look like the 98-pound weakling standing on the shore, will do one of two things.

If its all too much, it may make you give up and start eyeing your pension (if you're lucky enough to still have one.)

I've seen some of the journalists I know simply dig in their heels and refuse to recognize that change is not only coming, it's already here and it's kicking their ass.

It's enough to make me want to pull out what's left of my graying hair.

Or, these shake ups may motivate you to remind people that despite all the bells, whistles, touch screens, pop-ups, apps and tweets, you still bring a bedrock value to the game -- credibility.

I've always thought the key to adapting to change is recognizing what new things bring value to what you do, without losing sight of the values and practices you can't afford to give up.

Now, it's understood that "credibility" can seem a bit flimsy when journalism has been undermined in recent years by the need to compete and make money.

I could never figure out why this stunt did not get
Geraldo fired. Then I remembered, it's Fox News.

It's lead to everything from TV spots about how great the news NBC season will be or, what I like to think of as the beginning of the fall -- Geraldo Rivera revealing the empty contents of "Al Capone's Vault."

The blending of entertainment and news has made it ever more difficult to draw the line between news, opinion and fluff.

This is, of course, one of the dangers of letting the market decide everything.

It has given us hour after agonizing hour of "reality TV," as if you've ever seen anyone act completely normal while facing a television camera.

Seriously? I mean seriously?

Let's face it folks, "Honey Boo Boo" would not be on TV if no one watched it.

All of which is enough to put a little fear of irrelevance into the heart of anyone who believes that it actually serves democracy to have an independent entity that questions authority, exposes stupidity, corruption and waste and is able to present it with enough credibility that the people believe it, and act to correct it.

A little fear can be a good motivator.

Which brings us back to this Digital Notebook blog of mine.

Given that a newspaper only has as much space as the advertising pays for, I thought I might try this digital experiment of my own.

This is not the kind of "bell and whistle"
I meant folks.

It started by creating a place that, just like the newspaper, is new every day, where all the news that doesn't make it into the paper can be posted for people to see, or not.

It has also provided, as regular readers know, a place for me to spout off column-style from time to time.

So what insights has this experiment revealed.

Well, to a certain extent, it has primarily reinforced things I already knew.

That in local news, people like news about themselves.

Parents like to see their kids triumphs proclaimed, teachers like to see their work appreciated and people like to see those in authority held to account and, more than a little occasionally, ridiculed.

This is, of course, nothing new to someone who has been in local news for 25 years now.

"People like news, always have," was the sage observation boss lady Nancy March shared with me, with a smile, when I told her I was contemplating this post.

As to the daily pace, that was a little harrowing. Good thing I have been working at a daily newspaper for 15 of those years.

Nancy has another saying you get used to hearing during a typical newsroom morning, as we look over the paper, admire our handiwork and pat ourselves on the back for our cleverness, thoroughness or enterprise.

"Yeah, that was a good story," she'll say brusquely, followed by the inevitable: "What have you got daily?"

And so it was with this blog, planning how to get through weekends and, especially vacations.

Also, one advantage of this technology is that rather than rely on received wisdom, you can actually count which posts get the most interest.

The tireless John Armato

And so I saw the self-evident evidence that when John Armato sent me a press release with photos (I could never have made 365 consecutive posts without his steady stream of good news about Pottstown Schools) and I dutifully posted it.

He would then dutifully send out a link to all district employees, which translated into lots of hits.

Another hit generator is a daily e-mail that comes from Lawrence Feinberg, from the Keystone State Education Coalition. It contains education news from all around the Commonwealth and, when I had a post about education issues, I would send him a link.

Lawrence Feinberg

If he thought it worth sharing, he would and, again, my "hits" would go up.

All of this, of course, is the basic lesson of distribution. You can have the nicest or the cleverest blog in the world, but if no one sees it, what's the point?

It's the newspaper equivalent of giving a party to which nobody comes.

Finally, those posts which seemed to draw the most attention whose source was not obviously from someone with a wide distribution list sharing the link, were those not much different in subject from what I regularly write about in the newspaper.

This blog gizmo shows the most popular posts right on the page you're reading this (presuming you've gotten this far) and you'll see the three most popular posts come from distribution lists.

But the four and fifth place finishers are about Pottstown Borough considering new core values and a new mission statement; and a photo and ruminations on downtown facades.

These are not exactly the kind of subjects that would have a tabloid headline writer drooling. But they are, apparently, the kind of things people want to know about their community and what their leaders are doing.

All of which is to say that I spent a year in this dogged experiment and found out a whole of things I already knew:

1) People like local news about their community, and they like when it comes from a trustworthy someone who doesn't have something to gain by its distribution.

2) A good distribution network is as necessary for building audience for an electronic news vehicle you read on a screen as is is for a one you hold in your hand.

3)  And maybe we don't have that much to fear after all. We just need to be smart, and pay attention to how each new different vehicle works, what advantages it presents, and which paths it may take us down.

4) And finally, we need to figure out how to continue to provide this often-unappreciated function so vital to democracy in such a way that someone can make a living doing it.

And so, 365 posts later, on-line 12 months a year, seven days a week, 24 hours a day, and having garnered several hundred hits shy of 75,000 hits, we bring the experiment to a close.

This does not mean the blog will end folks, merely that I am not so sure that I will continue my daily posting.

I have made no decision about it one way or the other, just wanted to state that having run the course of my experiment, I am releasing myself from the pledge to do so.

Who knows? Maybe that will turn into an experiment as well.

It's not like any of this is planned or anything.

A Milestone

Well, it happened a few days ago, but I'm just getting around to writing about it now.

At this point in time (Monday) most of you are probably trying to hold your homes together as 'Frankenstorm' rolls through the eastern seaboard.

Few are likely to be checking the local blog, so it's perhaps fitting that I choose today to announce that I've reached one of the goals I set for myself when I started this blogging experiment.

Several days ago, The Digital Notebook topped the 50,000 hits mark.

Compared to other much more popular blogs, that's not a terribly high mark. My step-mother runs a blog about adoption issues (Birth Mother, First Mother Forum) and I think she hits that mark about twice a week.

But for a blog dedicated to small pieces of news in a small town, I consider it respectable.

I had set several goals for this enterprise when I started, and, actually, this one was the last, and the first to be achieved.

The 50,000 views milestone, apparently

somewhere in western Massachusetts.
Who knew?

As I watched the stats, experimenting with getting exposure and what worked and what didn't, I realized that 50,000 within a year might be achievable.

And so it was.

Thanks to all of you who have read the blog up to this point, all six of you.

By the way, I configured the settings so that my own views don't count as hits, so I hope none of you thought I was sitting up my attic late at night, obsessively clicking on the blog over and over to drive up the hit count.

So one of my other goals has yet to be achieved, but we're close.

It turns out that 365 posts is going to be a lot. 

I wanted to post every single day for a year and now, having revealed that, Hurricane Sandy will probably interfere.

That meant writing things ahead of time so, for those few days I'm allowed to leave The Mercury office and attempt a vacation, the blog would continue on.

With this post, I'll be up to 318, so we'll see if I make it 365.

The third and final goal remains unchanged and both achieved and unachieved for as long as I do this.

As I wrote on Nov. 9. 2011 in my first post:

"As anyone who has been following this newspaper business knows, space in the paper is not what it once was.

And although space on the Internet is theoretically limitless, experience has taught me that, what with templates, oversight and ranking, that space on The Mercury web site is not.

As you might expect, a lot of information crosses my desk on a regular basis and, as you also might expect, not all of it gets in the paper or on the web site for the reasons I've just explained.

So, this experiment is to see if I can't give some of those orphaned press releases, announcements and overheard tid-bits some exposure on space I (nominally) control."

So the experiment goes (boldly?) on, but before I do, allow me to offer a particular thanks to some people.

Firstly, to on-line editor Eileen Faust, who got me started and who answered all the endless technical questions I continue to have. "How do I make this caption jump to a second line? How do I unpublish something? How come this post is so boring?"

Diane, left, and Eileen

Her patience continues to amaze me and I would be lost without it.

Secondly, to community engagement editor Diane Hoffman, who helped me realize the larger reach of bloggers working together and that I don't have to be the 'lone wolf' all the time.

Nancy

Thirdly, to Mercury Editor Nancy March, who doesn't get too miffed when I work on the blog during work hours, particularly given that many of the posts often end up as stories in the paper. (She also gently reminds me when my posts are getting too long-winded.)

Fourthly, and this is a big one, to John Armato, the Pottstown School District's Community Relations Director.

Not only did he realize and capitalize on the opportunity my blog presents to the school district -- a daily post hungry for information, any information, it can post -- but he also inadvertently helped me to achieve this 50,000 mark.

John speaking last month after being named

Rotary Club's Person of the Year.

You see not only does John supply me with endless bits, pieces and photos about the good things going on in the school district -- it's not ALL bad you know -- but he also helps distribute them.

He does this by e-mailing links to posts about the district to his large list of staff and community contacts. To be sure, his motivation is, no doubt, to spread the good word about the school district.

But when he does this, I can practically watch the stats for that day's post sky-rocket.

If you don't believe me, take a look to the right at the most popular posts. Nearly all of them involve the school district, including one -- the one suggesting Rupert Principal Matt Moyer would look good in a purple Mohawk -- that continues to top the list months after it ceased being relevant.

And of course, last but certainly not least, thanks to all you readers who have continued to return. It would be pointless without you.

Well, so much for the honor roll.

See you out there in cyber-space.