It's been a grand week here at the Niagara Falls Reporter. Our Web site registered its 400,000th discrete visitor, which translates into 3.5 million to 4 million page reads, or "hits" in computer parlance.
|
JUMP TO STORY:
Editorial School Project Web Milestone Hudson Gallagher Hanchette Citycide Croisdale Sports Billstuff Letters |
Since the Reporter is a free paper, it never bothered us to throw our stuff out onto the World Wide Web for free. For our advertisers with their own Web pages, a link on our site provides a value-added bonus they get when they run ads in the print edition. Currently, more than 30 advertisers and vendors take advantage of this service.
Records show the Reporter has been read on every continent in the world, including Antarctica. Thousands of potential visitors, from Western Europe to the former Soviet Union, India, Pakistan, China, Japan and all the countries in between have accessed the Reporter site. The content they read and the advertisements they see are their first glimpse into what the Falls has to offer.
Our site went up in July 2000. Contrast it with Mayor Vince Anello's site, posted six weeks ago, detailing his mind-numbing "20-year Strategic Master Plan." As if he were going to be in office past 2007.
More to the point, compare it to the pathetic site the Niagara Gazette runs.
While the Gazette does indeed purport to be a daily paper, its Web site -- launched last year in the face of intense ridicule -- is a semi-weekly at best. As Peter M. Zollman pointed out in a recent article for the prestigious Poynter Institute journalistic think-tank, the Gazette's Web site stinks on ice. It does not contain one link to a single display advertiser.
Zollman was researching Kirk Jones' alleged plunge over the Canadian Falls in October 2003. He figured, wrongly, that the Gazette would be the best source.
"Aha, I told myself, try the Niagara Gazette -- the hometown paper owned by Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc. Couldn't find its website intuitively -- it's not NiagaraGazette.com, and it's not listed in either AJR's newspaper links or NewsLink. So I went to CNHI's corporate website, and it doesn't list a link either!" Zollman wrote.
"Impossible. No website at all? I got persistent. I called the paper. Sure enough, they do have a website, Niagara-Gazette.com. (Haven't they tried to get every logical URL? Nope.)"
He continued.
"Part 2 of this little episode: The paper doesn't have the story of the guy going over the Falls on its website! Anywhere. Even though someone in the newsroom assured me by phone, 'We covered it. It's on our front page (in print) today.' Maybe so, but it's not on the website. Hasn't anyone at the paper ever heard the rule, 'Do a great job on a major story, and your traffic will soar -- and you'll keep that traffic forever'? Apparently not," Zollman wrote.
As has been documented in the Reporter previously, the two URLs that would be pertinent to the Niagara Gazette are owned by Pine Avenue resident James Jones and the estate of the late Eddy Cogan of Toronto.
Had the Gazette made a friendly effort, rather than trying to threaten and bully, they would own those domains today.
The Gazette Web site not only shames the people who work there, it shames our entire community.
In the meantime, the Reporter site continues to grow and -- let's face it -- 400,000 online Reporter readers can't be wrong.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Nov. 30 2004 |