In a few days, Mike Tomlin and Kevin Colbert will conduct their annual press conference in advance of the NFL Draft. And, as we always do, we'll cover it.
Only this will be ... in person.
Dale Lolley and I will both be there at Heinz Field, where the Steelers will follow all standard safety protocol while also being the first local team to permit live questioning rather than limiting the process to virtual. And I've got to tell you, after a text exchange Dale and I had yesterday, we're both pretty stoked about this.
There also was movement in the past week on the Pirates' front toward getting back to normalcy. Nothing firm yet, and nothing I'm at liberty to discuss, but it was progress. We're eager to have this happen, as well.
Listen, I'm not here to complain about how the pandemic's affected reporters. That'd be tone-deaf beyond belief. I not only understand the precautions that've been put in place, but I appreciate the extraordinary effort that's gone into keeping us safe at Heinz Field, PNC Park and PPG Paints Arena. On top of that, I'm grateful that we've been able to ... you know, keep working while others haven't been as lucky.
At the same time, I'll comfortably share that we can't wait to get back to doing our jobs the way they're meant to be done: Working the locker room. One-on-one interviews. Asking follow-ups. And yeah, if I'm being candid, being rewarded for being there. Only two Pittsburgh outlets regularly cover all games that our three teams play, and that's just us and the Post-Gazette. So it's nice, when we invest our time and money into being there, especially when traveling, to have more of an opportunity to do questioning than those who don't put forth that same time and money.
A return to normalcy benefits us and, in turn, our readers.
It's coming, too, at least if all leagues and teams follow the lead of the NFL and Major League Baseball. The Pro Football Writers Association of America and the Baseball Writers Association of America have both been aggressively engaged with the leagues and players' unions to ensure that access remains unchanged from where it was pre-pandemic. The NHL ... eh, different world. There's been nothing yet on that front, nationally or locally.
However and whenever it all plays out, we'll obviously need to be vaccinated -- no issue at our company -- and we'll just as obviously try no less hard to get you original information throughout, regardless of limitations.
We'll get there.
JOIN THE CLUB(S)
Speaking of the draft ...
We're doing our own enlisting here, in a way, seeking help to promote our content on social media:
• On Twitter, follow the account @DKPSLunatics ... and I'll approve you to enter.
• On Facebook, join the group DKPS Lunatics ... and I'll approve you there, as well.
This was our first week of doing this, and we asked members to share three different pieces, a Pirates column I wrote, a Penguins feature by Taylor Haase, and the Alan Faneca feature by Tom Reed. All three did extremely well in those settings, thanks to your RTs, shares, likes and comments, all of which add to the exposure of the content. In the case of my Pirates column, for example, it wound up seeing 100,272 impressions on Twitter, an astounding figure, and 43,306 on Facebook, a well-above-the-norm figure.
There are a couple more lined up to do over the coming weekend, if you'd like to help out.
Thanks in advance for everything!
THE RAMON TAKEOVER
There's one reader survey we'd never need to take: What's your favorite part of Morning Java?
Because these would be the top three choices:
1. Ramon
2. Ramon
3. Ramon
Well, one learns in business never to fight City Hall, so here's the freshly rebranded Ramon Foster Show with more Ramon than ever, available on all forms, including video and podcast:
Hope you enjoyed this almost as much as he did.
We're expecting these to run Tuesdays or Wednesdays. It's hard to pin down a set day with Ramon's schedule.
WEEKLY APP TIPS
Sharing ways to make your app experience even better:
• We've got space for three team buttons at the bottom of the app -- Steelers, Penguins, Pirates -- but we've also got team pages for our Pitt, Penn State, Duquesne and Robert Morris coverage. Just tap the hamburger menu at the top right, find your school and tap to see a full, beautiful display of all our latest pieces by Chris Carter, Jarrod Prugar and others.
On the desktop/laptop, of course, we've got ample space, and all the team/college buttons are across the top.
Our previous two tips:
• Get an avatar! Only 825 of our readers currently have an avatar for their comments, and that makes for a whole lot of blah, gray nothingness. Let's change that this week. Open up your profile -- top left of the app or site -- and you'll see a circle at the top, along with a little camera. Either take or enter your image right there. (Warning: There's currently a defect in the app where it can't handle pics of significant size, so you'll probably have to do this on the laptop until it's fixed.)
• We can add images into comments now! Just find an existing photo or GIF anywhere on the Internet, including this site, copy the image's URL -- that's the web address assigned to that photo -- and paste it into your comment. We can't yet add videos, the way we could on the old site, but we'll get there.
BACK TO BUSINESS
• Our page views for the past week were 715,264, up 24.2% from the previous week. Our most-read original piece was Dave Molinari's exclusive debunking of a Canadian TV report that the Penguins had acquired enforcer Nic Deslauriers, at 24,997. Broken down by team, articles on the Penguins brought 25.3% of our traffic, the Pirates 21.7%, the Steelers 16.7%.
• Our new subscribers for the past week were at 139, up 40 from the previous week.
• Our new app downloads for the past week were 112 for Apple, up 1 from the previous week, and 77 for Android, up 1 from the previous week.
• Our podcast downloads for the past week were 83,227, down 3% from the previous week.
• We're at 40,365 (+112) followers on Twitter, we're at 37,039 (-10) followers on Facebook, we're at 14,469 (+14) followers on Instagram, and we're at 1,212 (+41) followers on YouTube. These figures are just for our official company account on each platform, not for us as individuals.
• We make mistakes. If you see one, email: Typos@DKPittsburghSports.com
• Anything you need, including lost/forgotten passwords, email: Help@DKPittsburghSports.com
• Random geographic fun: We had 12,023 unique users in ... Pittsburgh. I'm always citing all these faraway places, but I'm referring here to the closest place of all. Because when I say Pittsburgh, I mean Pittsburgh. Not a suburb but the city proper. And we're really proud to have this kind of a base right here at home!
