Web Notes Online

Sometimes it is useful to pause and look back at where you came from. We just modified the appearance of the stardem.com Website. It was the first change we have made since we went with our paid model 17 months ago.

I’ve always been a strong proponent of the Internet. More than 25 years ago when worked for another paper in our company over on the western shore, I was a strong proponent of developing close ties with our sister papers. We wanted a way exchange stories of common interests throughout our newspaper group. We often had to settle with faxing stories to each other and re-keying the material into our own systems.

The Internet has changed all that. It has become a vital tool of business. Data is transmitted between sites involving all facets of our operation from financial to news stories and pictures. It has also become an important tool for the distribution of information to the public.

The Website has become an important element for a news operation. It could be a radio station, a television station or a member of the print media like The Star Democrat, the public has become accustomed to using an Internet Website as one of their main gateways to the paper.

Our own operation has undergone quite an evolution. Like most papers we started a simple site back in the mid-90’s just to provide a web presence. That effort evolved through several webhosts to where we were providing the lion’s share of the local information from the print paper on the Website. This provide to be most popular with our growing base of computer users on the Mid-Shore.

While it is generally accepted that some form of print paper will always be desired, the interest in online news has grown more dramatically than many anticipated. The advent of web browsers with graphical interfaces (images), made the Internet far more desirable to the general public.

In the early days of the Web, much of what was transmitted was text-based. There were community bulletin boards that attracted hundreds of participants. While helping with the early Website at The Star Democrat, I also served as a moderator of a BBS here in Easton. It was great fun to interact with people in the area online. But that only attracted a small portion of the people in the community. The online community was small and few people had reason to get a computer for the home.

Computers where word processors useful for writing term papers or drafting letters that would be mailed to friends and relatives.

Email changed that. People started to interact via digital letters. You needed to have an account with an Internet provider to get access to email and surf the Internet with those new browser tools like Mosaic and Internet Explorer (I.E.).

It soon became popular for everyone to have a computer. Fifteen years ago few people in my office had one. As new reporters joined the operation, they not only came with a knowledge of computers but often had one at home. They had started using the Internet as a research tool for stories. Public agencies were starting to grasp the need and began to develop online as well.

Computers are now the most popular high school graduation gift for college-bound students. Often these laptop-type computers are replacements for older models used in high school.

The penetration of computers in the home continues to grow. Slow dial-up modems are giving way to high-speed Internet connections. The higher speeds are bringing with them the ability to transmit video as well as images. The computer is rapidly becoming the focus of the home entertainment center. Movies can be downloaded for viewing on large flat-screen monitors that give a theatre-like experience that is worrying theatre chains across the nation.

All this means quick easy access to information. The hometown newspaper strives to keep up with this new technology as readers expect to be able to access their paper in print or online.

We have been moving to keep pace with this as well.

For a small daily paper we have done pretty well in the face of the change from totally free to a subscriber model. We felt it was important to award our print subscribers with a benefit for their subscription and made the online paper free to them. That was started back in September 2005. Thousands have taken us up on the offer. Hundreds have joined us with online only subscriptions. We intentionally made the online subscription fee far less than a local print subscription and incredibly less than a print subscription from out of our circulation area.

In 2005, the year we transitioned from free to paid, we had more than 5.6 million page views and a total of 181,355 visitors. In 2006 when we were entirely paid, the page views climbed to 6.7 million. Total visitors for the year dropped to 156,933 but each was viewing more pages.

This year we are looking at a rate that will have both figures climbing to new highs. Based on projection from the first 44 days of the year we anticipate almost 8.1 million page views and more than 239,588 total visitors. This is just a projection based on a fraction of the year. They could be low since the early part of the year typically does not have the highest traffic.

As always, I am interested in your comments and observations. Let me know what you like and what you don’t like about the site. You can reach me at rpolk@chespub.com or visit my blog.