Our subscribers will complain about stuff related to the site, and often with cause.
One complaint we never hear, though -- and I mean never -- is that we favor one of the three teams we cover over another.
Way back upon the launch of this venture, I'd made up my mind that I'd take the same approach in terms of time, resources and editorial fairness toward the Steelers, Penguins and Pirates. That only made sense to me. All three are long-established big-league teams, each as prominent a part of our community as the other, certainly over the past half-century. So all three should, at the foundational level, be treated equally.
Think of it this way: The Steelers will probably always be the most popular of the three, and that's multiplied many times over among fans who don't live in Pittsburgh. The Penguins have grown exponentially the past three decades, and their grip on the people who do live in our city -- particularly the youth -- is something to behold, unmatched in the U.S. for an NHL franchise. And the Pirates ... well, I'll keep this tidy: There's a reason that a 135-year-old franchise brings out both the best and worst of us when talking sports.
Now, that doesn't mean everything can be equal.
All three won't succeed all the time, so the importance of their individual events will fluctuate. As will interest. But there's a few core principles that apply: We double-team all season openers, home or road. We double-team all playoff games, home or road. We double-team or even triple-team home games as they rise in relevance, or we go solo if they're sinking in that regard, but the only other variance is that we double-team all Steelers games everywhere, for the very obvious reason that they've only got 17 of them.
The same goes for news presentation. We're aware of what's hot and not, but every effort's made to do that within the context of all three teams being of equal importance. This morning, for example, Mitch Keller's five scoreless innings in St. Louis last night is sitting atop the site. Why? Because Keller matters to the franchise's future, because Alex Stumpf's been all over his career and is out there to offer original reporting from the scene, and because, by mid-afternoon, we'll still flip to Dale Lolley's Kickoff in ample time for the kickoff of Steelers-Lions tonight at Heinz Field.
We also assign one weekly analytical feature to each team -- Carter's Classroom, Drive to the Net, Mound Visit -- and distribute our Live Qs at 5, Tom Reed's In-Depth features, Rob Ullman's Cartoon Canon and, of course, my own columns in a like way.
Three teams. Same colors. Same first name.
Treated in exactly the same spirit right here.
WHAT ABOUT NUMBERS?
If you're curious how that breaks down to actual readership, here's how often our app users pressed each team's button on the bottom bar over the past full year:
• Steelers: 822,044
• Penguins: 731,251
• Pirates: 505,768
That's a pretty fair barometer over that long a span, I'd say, but here's one more for page views covering any and all content that includes one or more of those teams:
• Steelers: 5,806,739
• Penguins: 4,858,106
• Pirates: 3,370,463
To reiterate from above, that'll fluctuate. When the Penguins were winning Cups in 2016 and 2017, they were No. 1 here with a bullet. And there've been times, even in recent weeks, where the Pirates get there.
WEEKLY APP TIPS
Sharing ways to make your app experience even better:
• Want to find all our videos and podcasts easily?
Just use the blue bar!
This is the bar that spans the horizontal middle of the app's home page, and it features three other easy-to-access options, our TODAY schedule which includes the latest What's Brewing and staff locator map, plus separate tabs for all our VIDEOS and PODCASTS. Those tabs make our latest from Ramon Foster easily accessible. And because of the sliding function to the content, it's simple to move through all four options.
• If you've left a comment here and want to be notified when there's a reply, that's now easy to do! Atop every commenting thread, you'll see three options: TRENDING, SORT and NOTIFY. Tap NOTIFY and choose if you want to be notified of all new comments to that thread or just replies to comments you made. They'll now make their way to your device via alerts and, if you tap that alert, you'll be taken to the whole thread.
• We have NFL data! Just in time for kickoff, we've activated NFL standings, the Steelers' statistics and the Steelers' schedule, all easily accessed on our team page. We're pretty proud of these packages, to be honest. Working with Adam Bertram at BoomPress, I handpicked all of the categories you see, custom-creating the packages I felt would be best-suited for our readers. From there, Adam really made these things hum. They're updated around the clock, they're clean, easy to toggle and sortable.
THE MILITARY DRIVE
We're striving to connect an unprecedented 2,000 military veterans to their favorite teams with free one-year subscriptions in 2021. And so far, we're at 580, including 12 in the past week. (Two bulk purchases of five each!)
Thank you!
Every contribution counts, large and small, and they're all appreciated equally. Plain and simple, we don't reach our goal with just the big ones or just the small ones. All are appreciated. All are needed.
The cost of a single one-year military subscription is always $20. You can contribute one, or as many as you'd like. And the process couldn't be simpler: Email me directly at DK@DKPittsburghSports.com and let me know how many you'd like, and I, in turn, can thank you personally.
BACK TO BUSINESS
• Our page views for the past week were 410,794, down 2.9% from last week. Our most-read original piece was my 10 Takes from Philadelphia on the Steelers-Eagles game, at 10,219. Broken down by team, articles on the Steelers brought 31.4% of our traffic, the Pirates 20.3%, and the Penguins 11.8%.
• Our new subscribers for the past week were at 48, up 21 from a week ago.
• Our new app downloads for the past week were 62 for Apple, up 5 from a week ago, and 78 for Android, up 29 from a week ago.
• Our podcast downloads for the past week were 107,213, up 1.1% from a week ago.
• Our YouTube video views for the past week were 124,024, up 2.4% from a week ago.
• We're at 42,157 (+38) followers on Twitter, we're at 37,104 (-4) followers on Facebook, we're at 14,577 (-12) followers on Instagram, and we're at 6,585 (+445) followers on YouTube. These figures are just for our official company accounts on each of those platforms, not including any of our individual accounts.
• 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, to be read in an Alex Trebek voice: Of the top 200 cities/towns for app usage in the world over the past week, this one has the greatest population.