OIB’s Growing Traffic–A Mighty Thank You!

Five years ago OIB began as an independent site with much trepidation. Will visitors show up and will they stay? So far so good. In the last 30-day period OIB received more than 75,000 views from more than 10,000 unique visits that Google Analytics describes as the “number of unduplicated (counted only once) visitors” to a website. Views represent the total number of pages clicked. Google Analytics is one of the leading national sources for tracking web traffic. Growing an audience is not easy. You must pay attention to the product every day. Thankfully OIB readers participate. This post is simply to say thank you and provide an update about the site in light of new visitors.

Website traffic really is more about trends. Is your traffic growing? Fortunately our traffic is growing with a base of city and suburban readers. As local, independently operated, politically based sites go OIB is among the leaders. We’re not the Connecticut Post and never will be. We’re a different animal. We serve a niche audience that cares deeply about government and politics. And if you review the link hereto the Google Analytic stats you’ll see Hartford listed just under Bridgeport as the region providing OIB with the most traffic. They represent the decision-makers in the state legislature and executive branch of government who check in to check up on the political and government happenings in the state’s largest city. As we like to say when it comes to decision-makers reading OIB, we’re “small but mighty.” That’s because OIB stories are often picked up by other news outlets both directly and indirectly. Many blessings to OIB friend Tom Dudchik’s powerful aggregation site www.ctcapitolreport.com for spotlighting so many OIB stories.

There’s been an evolution to OIB in presenting information. What started out as a few posts per week is now multiple posts per day with an emphasis on government and politics with a sprinkling of highlighting city attractions and destination points that rely on foot traffic for survival. As much as we can, we try to help the entertainment non-profits.

Within that evolution has been an effort to urge folks to post commentary under their own name because it enhances the conversation. OIB allows handles and will continue to do so because in the world of government and politics some folks do fear retribution from the sharing of information, for instance a number of city employees post under handles, as well as business professionals who simply want to share information and observations without it coming back to bite them. (Protecting handles is similar to journalists protecting sources.) One change we have made, however, with a few exceptions is eliminating multiple handles. In the early days of OIB we had people with multiple handles who often talked to themselves, even contradicting their own statements. No more.

An example of an exception to multiple handles would be a city employee posting under a given name who wants to share info that could be perceived as subversive by a supervisor. Folks often ask about the person behind the handle. We do not reveal them (and don’t always know who they are) unless under extraordinary circumstances (see OIB posting rules and regulations). We will generally only share the name behind the handle when it’s clear the author’s identity is known. An example of this is Mojo, former City Councilman Ralph Mojica, who brings great insight into how the City Council operates. Mojica has always been up front about his Mojo handle.

OIB internally, for the most part, is a two-person operation by your host Lennie Grimaldi and webmaster Ray Fusci who helps me update and police the site. A lot of minutia goes on behind the scenes of OIB. We generally allow comment posting in real time because it enhances the conversation and allows for the timely sharing of news and observations. We do receive complaints about some over-the-top posters and do our best to enhance the conversation without the site losing its edge. If you’re a bad boy, we will throw you into the moderation queue where posts do not appear until approved. Several OIB posters are currently in the moderation queue. We have also banned handles and in a few instances individuals from the site. They can read OIB but they cannot post on it. That’s the value of a registration system a number of anything-goes sites do not implement.

We do allow more latitude in criticism toward public officials such as elected leaders than John Q. Citizen. When your check comes from the taxpayers it goes with the territory. Understand also only about one quarter of one percent of OIB readers actually post a comment and that’s pretty much the national standard for web comments. The overwhelmingly majority of readers do not post, although readers are equally intrigued by the comment section as the content section. Readers generally enjoy the various personalities who do post. Posters are not required to stick to the story subject. We believe in a free flow of exchanges.

OIB survives because we sell advertising space. The world of online news sites has two basic revenue sources available: display advertising and/or charging for content. We do not charge for content as some sites are starting to do. Charging for content is a logistical challenge to make work. How many readers will you lose and how many will actually pay the fee? So we have one revenue source: display advertising. Some very good sites beg for dollars from readers. We do not. Does advertising conflict with content selection? It has not been a problem, but you are free to call me on it if you ever fear that’s the case. If there’s a rich uncle out there who wants to eliminate display advertising and finance OIB, I’m willing to listen.

On the content side we have one guiding mantra: fairness. We do not pretend to provide straight down the middle reporting. We do not claim objectivity. We take advocacy positions. Sometimes the stories have an edge. But more important than anything else is fairness. You can criticize something or someone and still be fair. That means allowing them to have their say or share their point of view. If you have coverage concerns I want to hear from you.

OIB … always biased, always fair. Thank you for carrying us this far. Without readers, there’s no OIB.