Site Stuff: Looking ahead to the next 10 years!

Jan 27, 2024 • 4:22 am

The date's July 23. That'll mark our exact 10th anniversary as an enterprise, and that'll be the day we'll celebrate with a bigger-than-ever bash at our Downtown HQ/shop, an event we're already inviting everyone to attend.

That means everyone. You, too.

Dali and I are looking at that date an additional way, as well: We want it to represent a launch pad toward our next 10 years.

I'm going to level with you here: I've been not all that enthused about our overall ... identity, I guess. Not for a couple years now. That's got nothing to do with our work, our staff or even my own individual output, despite my being a lifelong vicious critic of the latter. The effort's been there. The passion's been there. And above all, thanks to you, the support's been there. I'm grateful for every bit of it, and I wouldn't want this to be interpreted any other way.

I've spent the better part of the past few weeks, especially now since football's ended, trying to figure out why I've been bummed about this. And as of yesterday, I think I'm finally there: Our editorial brand's built on an outdated approach, albeit packaged within in modern wrapping.

Hear me out on this, please.

Until a few months ago, we were still sending a reporter or two to each game or practice, filing standard stories, accompanying sidebars and all kinds of other material based on the same stylings -- even the same terminology -- used by newspapers for two centuries. The lone difference, really, was that the guy who left newspapers to start this company ... wasn't with a newspaper anymore. And even that guy continued to call himself a columnist, a role named for the vertical space down the left side of a newspaper page.

There were -- and are -- positives to this, of course. I'm sure that following basic journalism norms helped us get credentialed by every team, league or governing body we'd ever need and, just as important, allowed us to be seen as being no different than any other outlet by our readers. Without either one of those, we go poof.

At the same time, there's a flat-line feel to a lot of this. A feel that this isn't the future. That this already isn't what'll keep us growing -- or even just stable -- for the coming decade and beyond.

When I communicate with our audience as a whole, and this goes for both young and old, what I hear they value most in our coverage is that ability to connect with their favorite teams or players or just the city itself. They want to go inside. They want to be sunning on the fields in Bradenton, climbing the hills in Latrobe, pressed against the glass in Cranberry. They want the kind of first-hand, informal insight we were blessed to be able to share yesterday from Mason Rudolph. They want to feel like they're with us, wherever we go.

We aren't doing that well enough. I'll say that right here, and I'll take 100 percent responsibility for it. I'll promise you that our Feeds will become livelier, more packed than ever with dynamic, original material, more all-encompassing, more engaging ... it's a long list. But suffice it to say that part of this will be more visual/video elements that are our own. It's not OK for us, in 2024, to tap a few words on the screen and think we're bringing the reader along with us. All of us here will adapt. All of us will take this next step.

We aren't doing well enough by our community, either. Our commenting platform needs to be more in tune with the latest fun that's out there.

I'll take responsibility for that, too. We've been planning a new platform for months, one that'll offer you infinitely more than this one, but especially the ability to be notified when someone responds to your comment -- I can't believe we don't have that yet -- so that an actual conversation can take place. I'll promise you I'll do everything I can to get that to you as soon as possible.

My goal here has never been to compete with other outlets, as I've made clear countless times. It still isn't. I just want us to be the best version of ourselves, to offer a product with pride based in large part on being distinct. When people open the DK Pittsburgh Sports app, I don't want them thinking about how we can do the same thing everyone else is doing but maybe -- or maybe not -- better. I want them expecting our brand.

We'll get there. We'll get there very soon, actually. It'll begin with baseball, and it'll gradually segue into the other sports once those seasons start anew.

But first up ... a staff photographer?

INSIDE THE WORKS

• So grateful that so many of you, per the previous Site Stuff, followed through on our request to support us without spending a penny, by simply leaving us good reviews on specific outside platforms. There were, quite literally, hundreds of them. For anyone who hasn't yet, feel free to do so on our Google listing, our Apple or Spotify podcast channels, our YouTube channels for the Steelers, Penguins and Pirates and, last but definitely not least, our own app, whether it's the Apple or Android version. And again, thank you!

• Reminder: José Negron, new to our full-time staff in covering the Pirates, will start here Feb. 3. He'll succeed Alex Stumpf, who's moved on.

• An oddly busy football week on the way: I'll be one of the handful of reporters covering the Art Rooney II session Monday, and Corey Crisan's flying to Mobile, Ala., for the weeklong Senior Bowl festivities. And on the hockey front, Taylor Haase will be in Toronto for the NHL's All-Star Game.

• I'll be taking Dali along to Winnipeg next month for the annual pilgrimage there. The Penguins and Jets play there Feb. 10, but we'll arrive a few days early to make the most of it. Hoping to arrange a Manitoba subscriber meetup down at the Forks. If you're game, shoot me a note, OK?

• 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 discounts, as ever, 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 744,470, with 40,853 unique users over the most recent full seven-day span, Jan. 19-25. Our five most-read original pieces:

1. My Friday Insider on Mason Rudolph: 26,322

2. Taylor's coverage from Tempe of the own-goal: 20,820

3. Chris Halicke's Chalk Talk on the Steelers' OC candidates: 11,084

4. Alex's coverage of the Pirates' Aroldis Chapman signing: 14,805

5. Taylor's column from Las Vegas on Jake Guentzel's future: 10,468

As a fun aside, the everyday What's Brewing feature that's planted permanently near the top of the home page has an average reading time of ... 39 seconds! Which is hilarious when compared to, say, the average of six minutes, 22 seconds a reader spent on my Live Qs file. I see why, of course. It's just amusing to picture that first scenario.

• On the multimedia front, our podcast downloads for the past week were 123,719, and our YouTube video views for the past week were 141,167.

• Our company social media accounts are at 52,127 followers on X, 40,378 on Facebook, 28,876 on YouTube, 14,962 on Instagram ... and already 3,843 on the new Threads!