UPDATE, 2:55 a.m., Nov. 3: Please be sure to check our commenting thread for all the latest on this drive, which has suddenly taken off! Thanks so much to everyone who's contributed! Every single one means so much!
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CLEVELAND -- With the launch of this venture, before we'd made a penny of profit, we committed to giving free subscriptions to all our active-duty military men and women. Before long, our readers came up with the idea to go further and raise funds to include all veterans.
Together, we've met every single military request that's come this way ... until now.
Our goal for 2021, based on the pace of requests we regularly receive, was set at matching 2,000 military veterans to free one-year subscriptions. And despite a strong week we just had that saw 62 contributed, we're still only at 769. With just two months to go. And, more pointedly, with Veterans Day fast approaching Nov. 11, just a dozen days away.
To be clear: We'll take care of every veteran who asks, no matter how many or how few contributions come to help meet that demand. We're not in a position to ever go back on a promise like that, and we never will. But the natural cost that's incurred by our business to do that, including processing and servicing, becomes that much greater, and we've got to find other ways to recoup that.
So, at the risk of sounding like I'm gathering everyone around in a huddle ... let's do this.
Let's finish this off. Not a month from now. Not around Christmastime. But before Veterans Day.
I'll pin this Site Stuff near the top of our home page from now until the goal's achieved. Because I believe that it will be achieved, even with the hardships and other challenges the pandemic's brought on. I believe we'll reach 2,000. And when we do, I'll take personal blame for having needed to push this hard because I haven't done a good enough job of getting the word out.
If you'd like to contribute, email me directly: DK@DKPittsburghSports.com. The cost of these is $20 each. Any number is welcome and appreciated.
Thanks to you and, most of all, to those who serve. It's never, ever taken for granted.
PITT 150, PENN STATE 111
One rather passionate booster stepped up to buy 50 subscriptions to pass out to Pitt students! (Asked me not to disclose his identity, but I'm comfortable sharing that he just got tired of seeing Pitt constantly trailing Penn State here and decided to undo that all by himself.)
So now, our drive to achieve 1,000 total free subscriptions for Pitt and Penn State students has the Panthers ahead, 150-111. (We also sold 3 Penn State subscriptions!) And, as of two weeks ago, we've begun distributing these to the students.
If you'd like to contribute to the drive, email me directly -- DK@DKPittsburghSports.com -- and, after you hear my thanks, Dali will reach out with the rest. The cost of either a Pitt subscription or a Penn State subscription is $20 each. You can contribute as many as you'd like. Every contribution counts, large and small, and they're all appreciated.
ARTICLES THIS WEEK: 62
Just for fun, I went back and counted all the articles published on this site over the past week, and it came out to 62.
Mind you, I counted only actual articles. Not files that were housing multimedia. Not Live Qs at 5. Not our many and varied live game/practice files. Nothing but real, original written content. And it came out to 8.9 articles per day, even with the Steelers on a bye week and less football stuff than usual.
Legit question: Is anyone else anywhere providing value like this?
BONUS BASEBALL?
No, the Pirates haven't suddenly ascended into the World Series, but we'll be offering bonus coverage from Bradenton next month. The team's having instructional sessions for position players, media's been invited for four days, and Alex Stumpf will fly down to partake in the whole thing.
No such thing as an offseason in our little world. We're all over these teams year-round.
WEEKLY APP TIPS
Ways to make the app experience even better:
• Anytime you see the left/right arrows next to our articles on the home/team pages, tap those to find even more articles in that same category. We constantly pool eight articles inside those carousels for your convenience.
• Remember the 'All Content' menu entry on our old site? Yeah, lots of people liked that. We don't have one yet, but here's a handmade link you can bookmark and use whenever for the exact same purpose. That's for desktop. If you'd like to do this on the app, open our menu, tap inside the search field at the top, tap the magnifying glass, and it's right there.
• If you ever want to check the newest comments on a thread and have that include the newest replies, tap the SORT button atop the thread and choose (Newest Incl. Replies). Really useful.
BACK TO BUSINESS
• Our page views for the past week were 1,066,053, down 5.8% from a week ago. Our most-read original piece was Cory Giger's reflection on Urban Meyer's house, at 25,114. Broken down by team, articles on the Penguins brought 24.1% of our traffic, the Steelers 17.3%, Penn State 13.4%, the Pirates 7.8%, and Pitt 5.7%.
• Our new subscribers for the past week were at 27, down 65 from a week ago.
• Our podcast downloads for the past week were 152,582, down 8% from a week ago.
• Our YouTube video views for the past week were 46,537, down 9% from a week ago.
• We're at 42,463 (+16) followers on Twitter, we're at 37,154 (+1) followers on Facebook, we're at 14,511 (-5) followers on Instagram, and we're at 8,535 (+80) 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 trivia fun, to be read in an Alex Trebek voice: In 2021, our readership among women was 17.2%. In 2018, our readership among women was 12.3%. No question this week. Just saw that, and thought it was pretty cool. There were times in the earlier years that figure was in single-digits.