NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- I met Peter Mallory and his wife Jackie in 2003, when my husband and I moved to the same street in New Smyrna Beach, but I didn’t know them until I joined the Republican Club of Southeast Volusia County.
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They opened their gracious home many times to host fundraisers and meetings for Republican candidates at all levels of government. Peter loved to talk politics and wrote many letters to the local newspaper and the Daytona News-Journal. His letters were often published, but he felt limited by the 30-day restriction on submissions.
Peter and his friend, Henry Frederick, a newspaper reporter and city editor, launched NSBNEWS.net on April 7, 2008. They both agreed the area needed honest commentary, not public relations or spin. They also offered local writers the chance to contribute their thoughts on a regular basis in blogs while the main focus of the first true Internet newspaper remained breaking news, investigative reporting and news of record.
Peter and Henry continued to meet every morning for breakfast for more than four years until a few months ago when he started to have health issues and retired. At breakfast, they would discuss the stories of the day as they had done since they met in 2007. Henry calls Peter his “mentor” and together they hashed out a perfect working partnership. Peter helped with the funding, wrote his blog, and Henry created the product. Henry has been and continues to be the day-to-day hands-on overseer of the 24/7 Internet newspaper, where he solicits all of the advertising and writes virtually all of the news.
Peter was so proud of the growth as NSBNEWS.net morphed into an on-line source for nearly every city in Florida under the umbrella of Headline Surfer, with readers accessing the site through HeadlineSurfer.com as well as NSBNews.net and VolusiaNews.net.
In 2011, Henry submitted a series of Peter's blogs to the Florida Press Club and Peter won an award for blog writing. He loved the site’s growing number of viewers as captured by Google Analytics at over 1 million unique viewers and 2 million page views.
Henry and his wife, Sera, the third day-to-day member of the team, have produced more than 1,000 original videos of local events. Some of those videos were taken at New Smyrna Beach High School Cudas football games where Peter would be up in the stands cheering on the home team and Sera and Henry would be down on the field capturing the action with videos, photos and post-game interviews with the players and coach.
The site features over 20,000 original story postings. Peter was over the moon when NSBNews.net's coverage of Casey Anthony's release from jail after her acquittal was listed in Google News Directories as the top overnight story in the world.
Peter and I kept in touch and continued to see each other at meetings until just the last year or two when he became so involved in his and Henry’s creation. Peter's the one who recruited me as the very conservative writer for the site (which is generally non-partisan).
Peter's dry wit and clear-eyed view of politics will be so missed. Peter and Jackie Mallory were two great people and I’m happy they are reunited in Heaven together. We have another angel watching over us in Peter Mallory, urging us to better and greater things.