Our announcement last week that we're focusing our coverage completely on the pros met with all kinds of reaction from the readership, but the best might have come from afar.
Just yesterday, our longstanding friends at Rivals.com, the country's preeminent home for college sports coverage, reached out to extend an offer to all our current subscribers: Six free months to any site on their network.
That's a $50 value, given that their annual subscriptions are $99.95.
And again, it's for nothing. No catch. Completely free.
Just go to their sign-up page, and apply the following code: DKRivals6FREE
I've actually been a subscriber myself for years -- to Chris Peak's PantherLair.com, specifically -- and I can attest to its extraordinary value for the breadth and scope of what's there. It's for people who flat-out can't get enough.
In this case, the offer is open to our subscribers for any of their countless sites, not just those for Pitt, Penn State and West Virginia. Which means that all of our subscribers can benefit, not just those for the schools we were previously following ourselves.
Thanks so much to these folks for doing this.
MORE COVERAGE
There are games, there are practices, and those together comprise most of what we travel to cover. But there's definitely more, and we'll be at those places, too, some for the first time as part of our ambition to cover the Steelers, Penguins and Pirates as never before.
Dale Lolley, for instance, is headed to the Pro Bowl in Orlando in a couple weeks. Now, no one goes to the Pro Bowl to cover the game. That would be nuts. But with six Steelers there, including Antonio Brown, there's at least the chance of producing compelling material related to the team itself. We also might strike out, but it's worth the effort. Not everyone covers this.
John Perrotto is headed to the Pirates' four-day minicamp next week in Bradenton, Fla., and he'll file daily reports from there. Not everyone covers this, either.
Chris Bradford will fly out to San Jose for the NHL's All-Star Game. It might be only Sidney Crosby there from the Penguins, but we'll be there to follow him and to find our own stories. It'll be one of our site's three separate trips to the West Coast this month for hockey. Not everyone will do that.
There's much more to come in this regard, and we're going to be calling more attention to it going forward.
COVERAGE THAT COUNTS
A lot of people asked the question in the past week about reporting on the Brown saga and why we didn't have something up quicker or with more in-depth reporting.
It comes down to not only getting the story, but also getting it right.
We're in the business of gathering news. And we want you to trust that when we write something, we're 100 percent positive it's the truth. I had heard rumblings that something had happened with Brown last week. So had DK. But nobody was talking about it before the game. And nobody was really talking about it after the Steelers beat the Bengals, 16-13, to close out their season.
Oh, there were some hints dropped. And even Monday when I had a little more information, there still wasn't enough to go on. As we've seen since, there has been some disinformation out there about the whole thing.
So when I sat down to write what I knew Monday afternoon, I realized it wasn't quite enough to go on. But when DK and I added what we had together, there was this. That column, by DK, covered all of the bases on everything that was happening.
Were we first to report the big news? Not this time. But we'd rather be right than rush something out without the full story. -- Dale Lolley
WE'RE LISTENING
• Both the Apple and Android updates are out. Android went out yesterday. These won't be perfect right off the bat. We've gotten some positive feedback, and we've also had some concerns expressed about the logins, notably from people who didn't have issues before. We're pursuing fixes VERY aggressively.
Email these to us: Help@DKPittsburghSports.com
Putting them in comments doesn't help. Emailing does. We're forwarding every single email to the developer. No exceptions. And when you do email, please include which device you have. That's important.
Here's where to get your app:
• Oh, on that note: A few of you Apple users have mentioned not having videos play. The cause of that, as a couple of our readers pointed out to us, is having your device in power-save mode. That one's not on us. That's on a change Apple made. So, basically, just make sure your device has adequate power and don't use power-save mode!
• Our menus have been streamlined on all devices. The team navigations are simpler than ever, and now so is our list of features. One mouse-over on 'Our Stuff,' and they're all there. A few of you have asked for standings, statistics and schedule. We can absolutely do that. I can actually try to build those myself in the coming week.
• Some readers didn't like that the completed Live Qs at 5 vanished from the home page every night at midnight, so we've changed that. You now can see both Today's Live Qs and Yesterday's Live Qs, as they're now being labeled. -- DK
BACK TO BUSINESS
• Our daily active app users, averaged out over the past month, are at 12,480. That's +310 over the previous week, which sounds awesome, but also a powerful indicator that all the Steelers news moved some people to using their app when they hadn't in a while. It'll probably drop a good bit next week. The goal with this figure is more about a steady, gradual increase.
• Our daily page views, averaged out over the past month, are at 80,228.
• Our most-hit article of the past week -- exempting live files -- was my column on Antonio Brown at 26,175. The Steelers accounted for 179,831 of our page views, the Penguins 85,240, the Pirates 10,256. Expect baseball to make a big bounce back next week with Perrotto reporting from Bradenton.
• We're at 29,358 (+29) page likes on Facebook, we're at 29,489 (+136) followers on Twitter, and we're at 9,272 (+54) followers on Instagram. These figures are just for our official company account on each platform, not for us as individuals.
• Get our free newsletter with a simple signup! We send out a new one Monday-Friday at 7 a.m.
• We make mistakes. If you see one, email Typos@DKPittsburghSports.com.
• This is our media kit. If you're interested in connecting with our large, passionate following, email my wife at Dali@DKPittsburghSports.com.
• Anything you need, including lost/forgotten passwords, email us: Help@DKPittsburghSports.com. -- DK
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