There are lots of different ways to display and distribute news in 2020, and it'd be nice to think we've been pretty good at the ones we've tried.
And yet ... it's never felt all the way right.
We had news stories. We had alerts. We had social media reach. But we also haven't exactly excelled, in my own view, in compiling those efforts in any focused way. Meaning for the reader. We were here and there and everywhere on the app and site, without a real HQ, without a place you knew you'd get what you needed.
So, a couple days ago, I whipped up this thing called Steelers Live Wire. It's something I've thought about, even if just subliminally, for years. It's a one-stop shop. Everything that's going on with the Steelers is right there. Doesn't matter which of us is reporting it. Doesn't matter if the story's small or large, serious or silly. It all went right there. No bouncing around. No wondering where it might be. Just boom.
On top of that ...
• Our reporters will be able to concentrate on higher-grade material, rather than investing half the day or more producing full stories on developments that can be handled much more efficiently. The Live Wire is a comparative breeze on our end. Trust me, that matters. You'll see.
• Because of that efficiency, we'll get you news way faster than we have. Previously, in writing up full articles -- the minimum word count to register on Google Analytics is 250, if you're curious -- we wasted a lot of time meeting that 250 threshold. It's just not that important. It matters much more that you can trust us to be on news right away.
• Commenting will now become as close to universal as we've ever had it. Meaning if you just want to shoot the breeze about the Steelers, this is the place. No need to feel constricted by the article's subject matter or tone or timeliness. Just talk.
To date, the reader feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, which is great. And yes, to everyone who's already asked, we'll have them for the Penguins, Pirates and colleges, as well. But I'll beg in advance for forgiveness if they don't match up to what you're seeing on the Steelers one right now. The Steelers are in season, sizzling hot and generating material around the clock. The other two teams are a long ways off from that.
END COLLEGE TRAVEL
Effective immediately, DK Pittsburgh Sports will not travel to cover college sports until the fall of 2021.
This decision wasn't reached lightly, but it also wasn't difficult.
We had the remainder of Pitt's football season and a portion of Penn State's football season already booked, and we'd begun work on both Pitt and Duquesne hoops. But the Panthers' game at Georgia Tech being canceled today in Atlanta, the SEC canceling four games this weekend alone, the Ivy League shutting down all winter sports ... my friends, this thing's going to get worse before it gets better. And the difference between the colleges and pros is that the pros have to do it to get paid, so their events will go on one way or another. That doesn't apply for colleges, as we're now seeing.
For that reason and others, we're taking the safe route across the board and waiting till next year. Obviously, we'll still track everything our colleges do to the best of our ability.
This is frustrating. All of it. And I'm sure a ton of other people are experiencing their own frustrations in their own businesses, as well.
MORE LIFETIMES?
The Thanksgiving/Christmas is usually the time of year we allot to sell a few more Lifetime subscriptions. That's not yet set, but I'm hoping it happens. If it does, we'd sell no more than a very limited amount, and they'd be available through year's end ... or however long that number lasts.
NEW STUDIO!
We're constructing a new studio for Morning Java videos and DK Sports Radio podcasts. In fact, I've recorded my past three podcasts in the studio, basically sitting among the rubble, but it's expected to be up and running fully by Monday for both video and audio.
She Who Constructs Things won't let me share visuals until it's done, at least not anything more than the three shelves I snapped for the pic at the top here.
We're excited about this. Just another tangible sign of how well the multimedia fare is working for us.
Which reminds: If you haven't already, please consider subscribing to DK Sports Radio on one of our many platforms and, when you do, please set our programs to auto-download:
• Apple
• Google
• iHeartRadio
• Spotify
• Stitcher
OLD MATERIAL?
One thing that'll still take time is migrating old content to the new app/site. In the interim, if there's ever an article you'd like to find, we've created a pathway to that at the following link. You won't see anything on that actual page, but you can use the search bar in the top right.
BACK TO BUSINESS
• Our daily page views ... are just a mess. We went from them going to insane, implausible heights for three weeks to equally insane, implausible lows this past week. That's what happens when you switch systems. It can be hard to tell what's real. Anyway, the most-read original piece from the past week was Tom Reed's In Depth feature on Robert Spillane, followed in a very tight bunch by my Steelers column from Arlington, Texas, Dale Lolley's 10 Thoughts from Arlington, and my column on Vance McDonald and coronavirus. Broken down by team, the Steelers brought 34.5% of our traffic, the Pirates 8.1%, the Penguins 7.6%, Pitt 1.53%, Penn State 1.45%, and Duquesne 0.31%.
• Our podcast downloads for DK Sports Radio original content were 47,783, down 16% from the previous week.
• We're at 37,867 (+75) followers on Twitter, we're at 36,847 (+9) followers on Facebook, we're at 14,772 (+31) followers on Instagram. These figures are just for our official company account on each platform, not for us as individuals.
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