Making A Difference

Love Us or Hate Us, know one thing, We’re Making a Difference in a big way.

I say WE’RE making a difference because it’s not just what we provide here on Salisbury News that makes a difference. YOU do as well.

In just over the past two days we have published almost 600 comments. Salisbury News has published more than 300,000 comments. We've had more than 20 million page views and over 16 million daily unique visitors.

While we were hoping for a better start in 2011, I can't complain and neither can our Advertisers. We have published more than 42,000 posts and no matter what people say, we are making a difference. Staying informed and knowing what is going on in the greater DelMarVa area helps us to read into the future as to what we might expect next. It certainly allows us to be prepared to take action. A perfect example is the Toll Hike debate.

It was Salisbury News that highlighted the issue while the local mainstream media sat idle and ignored it completely. Salisbury News was the ONLY Lower Shore media outlet to cover the Kent Island public hearing and provide current coverage of the Perryville and Havre de Grace hearings.

On an average week day, Salisbury News readers can choose from upwards of 80 posts to stay informed about DelMarVa, our region, our nation, and the world. The print media cannot afford to put up anywhere near that volume of content. When it comes to television, they have 16 minutes, (in a 30 minute show) to tell the news. Almost half of that is weather and sports. What's left? A little Delaware and Maryland news. The cool thing about our format is: if you don't like a particular article or title doesn’t grab you, you can scroll right past it and go on to the next. They call that fast forward in the television industry. NO COMMERCIALS!

Another area Salisbury News has made a difference is in the cost of advertising. Ads for as little as $100.00 a month! That's less than $25.00 a week! The only thing keeping the print media afloat is legal advertising and WHEN a change to allow that information to be published online is made, another key part of the print media’s business model is up in smoke.

COMMENTS

The most important part of any article, to me, is the comments. The more people comment, the bigger difference we can all make. Do you have any idea what it's been like to go through and publish 300,000 comments? In addition to the comments we publish, I’m confident that we’ve had to reject over 200,000. They all have to be read as well.

As we continue to grow we do get comments referencing copy and paste articles. Another common comment is that some would like to see more local articles. OK, listen to me closely. We STILL provide local articles every single day. In fact, we've been providing even more local articles than we had in the past. The ONLY difference is, we've added MORE articles all together. Most of those focus on our region (Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia) and (we feel) impact our way of living here on the Shore.

Here’s something that’s really interesting. Go back and look at the comments on those “copy and paste” articles. You'll see more comments on many of those articles than you will on our original content. Not all the time, but for the most part our articles are providing information which impacts our way of life. You have proven that through your comments.

LOOK AT YOUR DAILY PAPER

Pick up a copy of your local daily newspaper. The majority of their articles are “copy and paste” from the AP, some other news service, or is syndicated. You may also want to look at the volume of comments their articles get versus ours.

Argue all you like; the truth is the truth. We are growing faster than anyone else and the MSM is shrinking. The next time you think about advertising, compare our costs with WBOC, WMDT, the Daily Times and even Metropolitan. Then keep it in the back of your mind that you can advertise here for as low as $100.00 a month, NOT per day. Metropolitan has a circulation of around 36,000. People do pick it up and thumb through it. But assuming their readers look at EVERY PAGE, how many times a month do you think they re-read it? Now there's nothing wrong with Metropolitan, but when you’re paying $5,000.00 to $7,000.00 for an ad, you may want to go back up to the top of this article and take a look at our numbers again.

In closing, I want to thank each and every one of you for visiting Salisbury News. More importantly I want to thank you for making your voice heard through your comments. From our local City Councils, to our County Councils, to our legislators and members of Congress, they follow Salisbury News and they do read your comments. Thanks to you, Salisbury News makes a difference; and that makes all the hard work worthwhile.

Keep Those Comments Coming In …

Thanks,