Volusia League of Cities calling cops getting attention of online users
Headline Surfer graphic / Shown above are snapshots of the 24/7 Internet newspaper's coverage of the Volusia League of Cities listed at the top of the Google News directories for Daytona Beach and New Smyrna Beach, respectively, as of 10:30 this morning. Shown below is a snapshot for the lead story in the Google news directory for Oak Hill related to the Top 500 anniversary countdown.
DAYTONA BEACH -- Headline Surfer has the top stories in three Volusia County cities this morning in the Google news directories, a testament to the power of new media.
Heading the Daytona Beach and New Smyrna Beach directories is the 24/7 internet newspaper's story headlined "Volusia League of Cities calls cops on internet newspaper to protect embattled mayor from glare of media spotlight."
The story was initially published Friday, but shot to the top during the overnight hours, as word spread helped by social media and two blogs written since then.
At the top of the Oak Hill news directory is the latest recap story in Headline Surfer's countdown of the Top 500 Stories of its 5th anniversary, published at 4 a.m. and headlined, "497. Oak Hill proud of its Super Bowl connection in winter resident Larry Csonka."
Headline Surfer is the first true internet newspaper launched in the Sunshine State in April 2008, and among the few in worldwide that Google includes in its around the clock news directories indexed by city and state (or province) or by postal zip code among thousands of news sources.
With few exceptions, Headline Surfer's content is mined by Google's robots where they are indexed and ranked based on readership, key words accessed and timeliness of news. Because of Headline Surfer's popularity, its content is often found at or near the top of the Google, Bing and Yahoo search engines.
The rankings are based on organic growth, dependability of news and relevance. Headline Surfer does not utilize adware to artificially enhance its rankings nor does it allow third party content that could contain spam, both of which are frowned by the internet's search engines and directories.
The 24/7 internet newspaper emphasizes breaking news and investigative reporting as its major focus. On a typical day, its not unusual for Volusia County residents to see their online news indexed in the Google news directories with the major players being traditional print media with the Daytona Beach News-Journal and the Orlando Sentinel, along with Orlando TV stations, WESH, WFTV, WOFL and Central Florida News 13. The new media staple is Headline Surfer.
Because the TV reports are geared to video coverage for the television news broadcasts with limited written news, they are typically in the mix, while the Sentinel only provides limited coverage in Volusia County. The News-Journal provides more content than the other media outlets because it has far more reporters, photographers and editors, though Headline Surfer often tops all media, including the Daytona paper even though most of its content is written by the one staffer.
That's primarily because Headline Surfer's news content is 100 percent free while the News-Journal and Sentinel charge for digital access after the first 5 or so free clicks and as a result disaapear from the top of the search engines more frequently.
Online readers see lots of duplication of stories because more and more government agencies are employing public information officers, commonly referred to as PIOs while municipal and county governments are turning to public relations specialists, commonly referred to as PR flaks.
Headline Surfer utilizes the content provided by these PIOs and PR specialists, though in the case of law enforcement, the internet newspaper is more demanding of the cop shops providing arrest and incident reports, which are far more detailed with less favorable spin. The PR releases are used far less frequently because they are far more self-serving at the municipal level than say county government.
Headline Surfer also shoots a lot of its own videos and produces far more on a daily basis than the local print newspapers because of its multimedia approach to sight and sound in addition to story telling and still photos.