A quick refresher

Posted by Mark Chapman on July 29th, 2010 at 3:06 am

Now and then I like to give our read­ers a refresher course on get­ting the most out of Engle­wood Edge.

Through an ana­lyt­ics pro­gram, we can tell what is get­ting read and what is not, and when our read­ers are most likely to come to the site. We also can tell how often the major­ity of read­ers visit, and how many read­ers each day, week and month are unique — that is, the num­ber of read­ers who visit at least once in a given period.

We find that a lot of read­ers treat us like they treat the daily paper: Look at us daily, scan head­lines and pho­tos on the lead page, then come back later to read. Many treat us like a weekly or twice-weekly, catch­ing up on all the news at their leisure. Still oth­ers visit a few times a month and go dig­ging back to see what they’ve missed.

That’s what’s nice about an online paper. We are there around the clock, every day. Sub­scribers never have to pay to read back sto­ries. Raise your hand if you fre­quently let the daily print paper sit for a day or two with­out pick­ing it up. OK. Now, raise your hand if you only read a few pages  on a reg­u­lar basis and feel guilty about all that paper going to waste. I thought so…

Let’s talk specifics:

Crime report­ing: We high­light major crimes. We run mug shots along­side sto­ries about impor­tant arrests. Those are among our most pop­u­lar sto­ries. But there is a lot more crime going on than you will find on the front page. We have, on the News page in the col­umn on the right, wid­gets for Police and Fire Blot­ter, Char­lotte Arrests and Sara­sota Arrests. The blot­ter cov­ers Sara­sota County sheriff’s activ­ity and Engle­wood Fire Dis­trict calls. Char­lotte calls are not read­ily avail­able to us.

Read­ers will note that there are often rob­beries, bur­glar­ies, sus­pi­cious per­sons and inci­dents, dis­tur­bances, etc. Check out the loca­tions of the calls and learn where the pock­ets of trou­ble lie. It tells you a lot about our area.

Many of the fire and vehi­cle crash calls turn out to be minor. We try to bring you sto­ries on the major incidents.

Polit­i­cal report­ing: We try to bring read­ers a sense of what is hap­pen­ing of impor­tance to Engle­wood. There is an argu­ment to be made that any­thing that effects the Char­lotte or Sara­sota County is impor­tant, but, with lim­ited resources, we focus on Engle­wood issues. Some­times those issues are dis­cussed with­out any action. Those are called “turn-of-the-screw” sto­ries and we don’t waste your time with them. Our aim is to tell read­ers when some­thing of impor­tance is com­ing up, and what hap­pened if there was action taken. And we try not to spend a lot of time dress­ing up the info with super­flu­ous quotes and back-and-forth argu­ment unless it is impor­tant to the story.

Events: We take a lot of pho­tos. We cover a lot of events. We would do even more if every­one with an event would let us know what is hap­pen­ing. If we miss a fundraiser or big gath­er­ing, it is likely because no one let us know it was happening.

Leisure: Our newest sec­tion focuses on enter­tain­ment, arts, cre­ative writ­ing, din­ing and travel. It includes, in the right col­umn, a wid­get with a nightlife cal­en­dar. This was in answer to sev­eral inquiries. Unfor­tu­nately, not all venues send us infor­ma­tion. We dig it up from web­sites for some places, but not for all. Thank you, Neigh­bors Bar & Grill, for send­ing your infor­ma­tion. A gold star on your foreheads!

Clas­si­fieds: This one con­founds me. Any busi­ness in town can put help wanted ads on our site for free. Just go to the Clas­si­fied page, click on the ad sub­mis­sion bar and fill out the form. FREE. FREE! What is there to lose? Sorry, folks, not tak­ing advan­tage of a free ser­vice is a bone­head move.

We also give FREE clas­si­fieds to any­one sell­ing any­thing for under $500. We give FREE clas­si­fieds to peo­ple giv­ing away or look­ing for a pet.

We charge $10 a week for a ser­vice direc­tory ad, or a rooms-to-rent ad. You get 250 words and a photo. You’d pay triple dig­its for that much space in the prints. We charge $25 a week for a real estate ad with 250 words and three pho­tos. Not many tak­ers there, but the one that adver­tised most recently sold their prop­erty for  some­thing approach­ing $300,000.

Obit­u­ar­ies: One local funeral home has used our FREE obits for months. Another has recently come aboard. It’s FREE. Pic­tures are FREE. Unlim­ited words are FREE. Fam­i­lies who want a real obit with­out pay­ing absurd fees can direct their funeral homes to sub­mit extra info and pic­tures to us. We’ll pro­vide an obit­u­ary that tells peo­ple all about the loved one with­out charge. The way it should be.

Sports: The cover the Stone Crabs. We run game sto­ries daily, pho­tos some­times. The sto­ries are avail­able to non-subscribers. Not many peo­ple are read­ing about the Stone Crabs. I’m not sure if read­ers don’t know we cover them, or they just don’t care. WE have cut back on photo assign­ments because of this.

As for other sports, we hope to gain coop­er­a­tion of the high school and youth coaches to con­tact us with results after their games. We are a two-person news staff and can­not get to most games, but we would be happy to take info via e-mail or over the phone.

If any­one has any ques­tions, or sug­ges­tions about things we should cover, or things we should drop, send me an e-mail at editor@englewoodedge.com.

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One response to “A quick refresher”

1. Old Fart

   7 / 31 / 2010
   11:58 pm

   Quite frankly Mark, I don’t know how you do it!
   You must work 27 hours a day to get as much into this site as you do.
   As you well know from your ana­lyt­ics pro­gram, I read this site sev­eral times a day.
   I used to read the print paper in the wee hours at work when there were no cus­tomers and my chores were done. I used to write in the opin­ion page as well but with the nec­es­sary lead time to print, the top­ics were often stale in this 24 hour news cycle world.
   Keep up the good work. A com­mu­nity that has a local infor­ma­tion asset like this, can go a long way in resolv­ing local prob­lems, with a lit­tle reader participation.

   DJH

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