Born in Puerto Rico, raised in Pittsburgh and ... pretty much destined to connect with baseball here in some form, right?
Well, yeah.
My friends, please join me, Dali and all of us at DK Pittsburgh Sports in welcoming José Negron to our full-time staff.
He'll cover the Pirates and Major League Baseball for us, in addition to other stuff we'll have in store for him, and that'll begin Feb. 3, his first date with us after finishing up at the Mon Valley Independent news outlet in Monessen, Pa., where he's most recently served as a sports reporter and assistant sports editor.
And before I share more, let me put this out there: We've never had a hiring process anything close to this. As I'd promised everyone here several months ago, we were going to take our time with this. Which we did. There were hundreds of applications from across ... I was about to say the country, but we also had two legit qualified candidates from Mexico and Argentina. They were still coming within this past week.
Among the many traits we appreciated about José were that he's made his way into this industry the right way, working at a longstanding institution with the Mon Valley Independent and covering not just sports but also straight news. I don't care how get-off-my-lawn this'll sound coming from me, but that's how I did it and how almost all journalists of my generation did it. No shortcuts. No I'm-good-at-tweeting. No priority other than being a reporter.
José's young, but after seven years, he had the full course. Before being hired at the Mon Valley Independent, he graduated from California University of Pennsylvania in 2016 with a journalism degree. That's the old-school script. I love it.
Beyond that, José knows his ball. And in particular, the Pirates. He and Alex Stumpf knew each other from common blogging days, and I'm not going to lie that Alex's recommendation didn't exactly hurt José's cause. I'm trying to think of a non-geek way to describe either of them in this capacity, but I'm afraid I'll come up short. They are who they are.
I'll repeat that my own role in baseball will remain the same: I almost always cover 40 games, including a handful of trips, plus two separate stints at spring training. Chris Halicke will also be part of this, as he'll cover both of the Pirates' trips to Texas, as well as the All-Star Game that'll take place there in Arlington.
José will write up an introduction of his own shortly before starting.
INSIDE THE WORKS
• One thing I'd like to do in the near-term future is basically shut down -- meaning just me -- for about a week or two to handle some lagging business/promotion needs. I was going to do that this month, but Mason Rudolph had other ideas.
• Our app's currently undergoing a behind-the-scenes update, and you'll soon be asked by Apple or Android to update. It's framework stuff. Don't sweat this. In some cases, it'll just update itself.
• We're aware of an issue in which some font sizes have gotten smaller, both in articles and in comments. It wasn't intentional. Developers are on it.
• Refreshing's been an issue, too. Developers are on it.
• Everyone still loving being ad-free? If you're not there yet, it's only for paying subscribers. If you aren't subscribed yet or if your subscription's expired: this is our new subscribe page. Make sure you're logged in, tap on the link, and thumb down to the bottom for the SUBSCRIBE button to buy/renew at the monthly or annual level. We also have pages for student subscriptions and senior subscriptions.
• For anyone asking -- and we still get lots of questions on this -- yeah, there's still a subscription level. It's the level where there are zero ads, first and foremost. It's an infinitely better experience. It's also the level at which readers have access to our Live Qs, our commenting platforms, our in-person meetings and many other perks. We feel it's a really good value.
BACK TO BUSINESS
• Our page-view numbers for the past week were 921,449, with an all-time record 40,827 unique users over the most recent full seven-day span, Dec. 31-Jan. 6. Our five most-read original pieces:
1. My column from Baltimore on Rudolph: 33,960
2. Corey Crisan's coverage of Steelers into playoffs: 28,196
3. Corey's coverage of facing Buffalo weather: 8,875
4. Chris Halicke's Chalk Talk on Najee Harris: 8,552
5. Taylor Haase's coverage of Penguins in Philly: 8,114
As an aside and FYI, our Steelers-Ravens live file from Baltimore had an unbelievable 73,069 page views. I'm not sure where that ranks all-time, but I can't recall a number higher.
• On the multimedia front, our podcast downloads for the past week were 123,272, and our YouTube video views for the past week were yet another all-time record 276,531.
• Our company social media accounts are at 52,050 followers on X, 40,368 on Facebook, 28,212 on YouTube, 14,954 on Instagram ... and already 3,644 on the new Threads!
• We make mistakes. If you see one, email: Typos@DKPittsburghSports.com
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