Headline Surfer graphics / The crash of a van into a neighbor's home early Wednesday was the freshest news in the Google News Directories for Orlando as shown in the snapshot graphics at left and below.ORLANDO -- Headline Surfer demonstrated once again why it truly is the 24/7 internet newspaper, picking up a bizarre motor vehicle crash early this morning under cover while the much bigger media outlets were asleep.
The brief story, headlined, "Florida Highway Patrol: Orlando man falls asleep at wheel of new Dodge Caravan; crashes into neighbor's garage," was filed just after 5 a.m. and picked by by the Google News Directories within 5 minutes where it was trending online as the freshest offering.
The New Smyrna Beach-based internet newspaper, launched five years ago in April 2008, first as NSBNews.net and re-branded last year under the umbrella trademark "Headline Surfer (accessed via HeadlineSurfer.com, VolusiaNews.net and NSBNews.net) primarily covers the greater Daytona Beach area and Volusia County.
Headline Surfer is very popular with metro Orlando online readers, even though it is the smallest "new media" outlet worldwide with a lone professional journalist whose stories, blogs, still images and videos are routinely found in the Google News Directories throughout Central Florida, as well as prominently displayed at or near the top of the first page of the search engine using a few key words.
The "little internet newspaper engine that could" has actually led the Google News Directories worldwide on several occasions, including the the release of Casey Anthony from jail after her not-guilty verdict to capital murder, the overnight manhunt for the Boston Marathon massacre brothers and the advance of the jury selection for the George Zimmerman murder trial earlier this month.
Headline Surfer is credentialed with a guaranteed seat in covering the Zimmerman trial from the Seminole County Courthouse in Sanford and is among three media outlets to win a journalism award for coverage of the slaying of Trayvon Martin, for which Zimmerman is charged with second-degree murder. The other award-winning media outlets were the Orlando Sentinel and the Huffington Post.
The internet newspaper's lone employee was the top journalist in the Sunshine State in 2012, with four individual Florida Press Club awards for five stories and three blogs as well as having one of the top online sites.
The award-winning coverage included not only Trayvon Martin, but in-depth investigative reporting on a Daytona Beach police supervisor promoted to captain despite alleged abuse of women cops and the dismantling of the scandal-ridden Oak Hill police force led by a chief with a cocaine past; coverage of NASCAR's Hall of Fame recipients and their impact on the history of the Daytona 500, the carnage of Bike Week highway fatalities and for operating a top internet website with use of social media.
The 24/7 internet newspaper was the first of its kind in Florida and among the few in the country to go well beyond beyond blogging that is typical of new media.
Headline Surfer's Story on the van crashing into the neighbor's garage was knocked out of the lead position two hours later by a story filed by the Orlando Sentinel as shown at left.