Online media rules New Smyrna Beach; print media not here

When Noah was building the ark, he and his family were laughed at, as they labored and brought in the creatures of the earth two by two. But then the rains came and that laughter turned to cries. The ark was afloat and the doors closed. Such is the case with online-only media. The print papers laughed at us the first year, even the second year. Now that we've passed year three, they aren't laughing any more.

NSBNews.net file photo / Robert Wayne Lott and his wife, Michele, operate the weekly Observer newspaper out of their Edgewater home after their sudden exit from Flagler Avenue in the heart of New Smyrna Beach's CRA district.  

The News-Journal closed its Canal Street bureau and left New Smyrna Beach for good two years ago. The Observer folded three years ago on U.S. 1. It reopened under new ownership several months later on Canal Street. Then it retreated to owner's floundering business on Flagler Avenue. Last month, it retreated even further to the owner's Riverside Drive house in Edgewater.

Yet, it is still masquerading as a traditional newspaper.

The print newspapers need the tax dollars that come with local and county government. We don't. We won't sell our souls. If we learned anything from the American Music Festival fiasco, when the money or promise of tax money comes rolling in, print media will hype an event to no end.

Isn't it funny when the print daily was stiffed of its 80 grand, suddenly the reporting turned on Kent Sharples and Daytona State College? Closer to home here in New Smyrna Beach, there's the lust for CRA funding, double dipping for advertising authority money and the hype over economic development.

And who is there to scoop it up? Why the weekly print newspapers that fall all over themselves for that tax-supported money. A Flagler Avenue bar manager was actually quoted in the print daily last week as saying $54,000 in CRA money for advertising was directly responsible for putting 400,000 pairs of feet on the street.

The comment was not challenged; just another hyped story for community groups to come get their share of $100,000 in advertising money from the New Smyrna Beach CRA for "publicity." There is no criteria on minimum standards for selecting media outlets to lavish this money on. NSBNews.net isn't going to get any of it, even though we are now the dominant media in greater New Smyrna Beach.

We actually report the news -- good and bad. You want fluff and hype and how everyone is working together to create economic development, you find that in the print media. The hyper-local news you find online with NSBNews.net.

Take the 2011 New Smyrna Beach High School graduation, for example. Not one word of coverage; not even a photo in the Observer that claims it is New Smyrna Beach's newspaper. But they did have a "press-release" story on the back page: "Local athletes Saluted." Of course, just below this story, which has one, count it, one athlete from New Smyrna Beach and a coach, there is a half-page ad from Brighthouse Networks.

That weekly print paper is none other than The Observer, which prided itself on Canal Street three years ago, and then on Flagler Avenue in the heart of the CRA district. And now, they hide their operation in shame in the publisher's Riverside Drive house in Edgewater -- far from downtown New Smyrna Beach. We'll have much more on them in the coming days.

One of the things I learned in my years of journalism and my continuing craft of power reporting is to follow the money. That's where the power elite gets nervous and the print media gets scared. The print media outlets claim there is a definitive line between news and advertising. Is that the case any more in Volusia County?

The print media operatives want to portray online media as outsiders; dismiss us as "website bloggers" with no community ties.

Well, my question to the Observer: Where is your newsroom. Where is your editor's office? You have an office manager: Where is her office?  How can a print newspaper go from being in the heart of a downtown for nearly 100 years to ending up in a residential dwelling in the next town? How is it that the Observer tells its readers it's on hiatus for a few weeks, but still prints a section with a full-page ad from the local hospital that is millions in debt?

And notice how a small group of people are involved in community organizations where taxpayer money is involved? Not just here, but in Daytona Beach and DeLand.

There is a lot that reeks.

Are we at NSBNews.net worried about advertising? Absolutely, in this economy. Are we desperate? Absolutely not.

While print media continues a steady decline, we are growing.

Our Google Analytics don't lie: Since Jan. 1 and through May 25, we've had 150,474 daily visitors to NSBNews.net, 34,182 of them have come through our alternate URL, VolusiaNews.net.

We go where the news is happening and we report it. We're everywhere in Southeast Volusia. My wife, Sera and I have been to countless festivals in the heart of the CRA, the fireworks in Edgewater, the commission meetings In New Smyrna Beach, Edgewater and Oak Hill. We've even been to Tallahassee, covering the news we broke on the city's planning fiasco that grounded millions of dollars worth of large-scale developments. We broke the police scandal wide open in Oak Hill earlier this year.

New Smyrna Beach High graduation coverage epitomizes our commitment to greater New Smyrna Beach.

Observer Editor Robert Burns can put a thousand photos on Facebook of his friends; he can put 10,000 for that matter. What he can't do is provide coverage for the families of greater New Smyrna Beach. Oh and by the way, our Facebook network is even larger than the News-Journal, the Observer and the rest of Volusia's print newspapers combined and growing.

So keep up the glad handing Mr. Burns and carrying the mantra of your boss, Robert Wayne Lott, portraying us as outsiders, as "website bloggers."  When the Riverside house goes the way of your "newsroom offices" on Canal and Flagler, then where will you be?

By the way, you might want to get that Twitter account of your's fixed. It's been spinning since April 4.

And yes, Messers Lott and Burns, I took note of your "recycling tip of the week" where you made the snide comment: "Try doing that with the Internet," with the photo of your newspaper with a row of books. Tell that to the 400 Cudas graduates and their families that you dissed.

But then again, you did get a big ad from Brighthouse and that's what it's all about isn't it Robert Wayne Lott? After all, you have to pay your mortgage, don't you?

You are not full disclosure with what little readers you have. So we're going to do it for you. Are you still laughing or are you crying in your beer at your favorite CRA bar on Flagler with your buddy, Steve Dennis who lost his seat on the CRA thanks to you?

Don't think so.