Last year was a good year for The Island Free Press, and we want to start this new year by thanking all of our avid and devoted readers.
Many of you have been with us since our first publication in September, 2007 ? more than three years ago now. And many of you have joined us only recently.
We are grateful to all of you for making Island Free Press a popular and viable forum for community journalism on Hatteras and Ocracoke islands — and a premier vehicle for advertisers who want to reach the folks who live on the islands, own homes here but live elsewhere, or are visitors here.
In 2010, this newspaper had more than 1 million visitors from more than 200,000 unique computers. And we had a total of 2.43 million page views.
As you can see from the accompanying bar graph, readership varies by month from 78,000 to more than 115,000.
This is definitely a website that is driven by the news. When there is a lot going on in the news, we have more readers.
Our highest month for visitors was more than 115,000 in January when Serendipity, the well known Hatteras Island beach house that was part of the ?Nights in Rodanthe? feature film, was moved to a safer location away from the encroaching Atlantic Ocean.
The next highest was September with 104,000 visitors. It was the month that Hurricane Earl brushed the islands. On just one day ? Friday, Sept. 3, when Hurricane Earl passed close to Hatteras with high winds and soundside flooding — we had 10,000 visitors.
May came in third with 101,000 visitors. That was during the public comment period on the National Park Service draft environmental study on off-road vehicle rulemaking on the seashore.
We now have 4,100 readers signed up to get e-mail alerts from us.
Our readership is very high on Hatteras and Ocracoke, and we have a good following from the northern beaches and other areas of Dare County.
However, most of our readers do not live here, but are regular, long-time visitors, off-island property owners, or newcomers who have just discovered how terrific a vacation at the seashore can be.
We don?t have new ?editions? as such as some other online publications have. We publish the new articles all during the week. Most weeks we publish new material every day.
However, once or twice a week, depending on the news, I send out an e-mail to readers with a summary of the newest articles.
You can sign up for e-mail alerts at the bottom of the IFP front page.
We also have a Facebook page and Twitter account, and we publish updates more often there. Click on the Facebook and Twitter icons on the front page to join us or follow us.
Our mission when we started Hatteras and Ocracoke islands? first and only online newspaper was:
The Island Free Press is a Web newspaper covering the people, the issues, and the happenings that are constantly shaping our Hatteras and Ocracoke communities. It is edited and owned by Irene Nolan, who was for 16 years the editor of The Island Breeze and who lives on and loves these islands and who knows their people, their issues and their happenings. (And now co-owned by Donna Barnett, who started visiting Hatteras as a youngster and has lived her for 14-years. She is the former graphic designer for The Island Breeze.)
Your Island Free Press will cover and post the news as it happens, and its writers will explain the past, examine the present, and explore the future for residents and visitors alike. Writers familiar to island readers will cover everything from recreation to education, from policies to politics, and the Editor?s Column will try to put all this in perspective.
We thank you for caring about these islands and for being good neighbors ? be it for a weekend or a lifetime.
That is still our mission today.
Our signature issues have been, and will continue to be, beach access on the Cape Hatteras National Seashore and the replacement of the Bonner Bridge.
However, we will continue to pursue other breaking news stories, the economy, and our commercial and recreational fishing industry and to publish insightful commentary, features articles, photos, and slide shows of life on the islands.
We have a really terrific archive of our work that I hope you won?t overlook, especially if you are a new reader. The archive has a Google search function if you are interested in certain topics or you can peruse stories by category and year to see what you might have missed.
This look back at 2010 would not be complete if we did not thank the businesses that have supported our work ? many of them since the beginning and most for several years.
Without their financial support, our work at The Island Free Press would not be possible.
We owe them much for our success, and we hope you will take note of them and make a point to visit them when you are here ? maybe even thanking them for supporting this newspaper.
If you have a business and are not advertising, we will happy to tell you what we can offer you for a most reasonable cost. (E-mail us for more information at sales@islandfreepress.org.)
Finally, we want to hear from you, our readers.
Please send us your comments on the newspaper ? on what you have liked and haven?t liked and why, why you keep coming back, what other stories you would like to see, how we can better serve our community. Do you like the set-up of our blog and can you easily navigate from story to story and page to page?
And keep those letters to the editor and blog comments coming.
Let us hear from you in 2011 and have a happy, healthy, and prosperous new year.
