By JOEL PHELPS | arkadelphian.com
We’d like to offer a heartfelt Thank You to our readers and advertisers who make your local news website possible. On average, the website generates a page view every 20 seconds based on our 2023 statistics, which have continued an upward trend each year since our launch in summer 2021. Every 20 seconds! We feel like that’s an unfathomable statistic given the population of our town and outlying areas. Starting this endeavor, we had no idea the community had such an unquenchable thirst for local daily news. Now we know! So many of our readers have personally thanked us for keeping them abreast of what’s going on in the area. Your appreciation and compliments are encouraging and give us a sense of great fulfillment. Our advertisers fund this operation, and they’re just as important as our audience. We implore our readership to let our advertisers know that their ad is being seen; to do business with them; and/or to thank them for their support in providing local news coverage. After all, it’s because of the ads that arkadelphian.com remains in existence. And, if you own a business and need more eyes on your message, you should know that your advertisement could have been seen twice, maybe even three times, while you were reading this message.
First thing we noticed was the different lectern.
We were pleased with our efforts in providing an exit poll during the primary election. Most of the voters who participated were familiar with arkadelphian.com. We’re glad the results of our poll somewhat mirrored the actual outcomes of the three local races in which we polled voters. CLICK HERE to see our exit poll statistics.
Election night coverage is our favorite. At the time of this writing our livestream of early voting results had been seen by 5.1K of our Facebook followers, some of whom grew impatient while waiting on the county election commissioner to announce early voting results. Our phone was atop a tripod to be used as a video recorder, and in the hour that we waited for the results to be announced, several text messages came to us wondering what the holdup was. We weren’t ignoring these concerned readers and friends, but we also weren’t willing to risk missing the livestream.
As we do with most any election, we worked past midnight once the total results were provided. This is our favorite part of the evening, when we make phone calls to victors (and sometimes the conceders) while writing from our laptop. Once our final article of the night is published, we find it difficult to wind down and usually stay awake for the next few hours. We took a sort of holiday on Wednesday, sleeping in and taking it easy in the afternoon.
We’ve noted an influx of canines roaming our Martindale Hill neighborhood. This Saturday a pair of large dogs trotted by our front porch picnic. Ozzy the Chocolate Chihuahua didn’t like being startled by the larger company, who sniffed through the wire fence. Ozzy barked his fool head off as Dad hauled him inside to avoid conflict. We surmise that all the unattended pups are simply headed to the nearby Barkadelphia Community Dog Park to frolic. The dogs that paid us a visit Saturday might have been hoping to recruit Ozzy along for the fun, but Mom and Dad are just too protective.
Thank you, Ms. O’Quinn.
Still contemplating the most effective way to provide coverage of the April 8 eclipse. Leaning toward a livestream, not for the local readers who will undoubtedly be observing for themselves, but for our out-of-state readers who want to see as it unfolds. We’ll be 60 when the next total solar eclipse comes around, so we’ll be watching this one just in case we don’t make it to 2045.
Joel Phelps is publisher and editor of arkadelphian.com. Opinions expressed in Bits & Pieces are his own. Contact him at 501-304-2134, but never when he’s covering an election.