What were the top stories in Volusia County in 2008? How about in Southeast Volusia? We'll have these answered for you starting Christmas Day, beginning with the countdown of the top 100 stories of 2008 in Volusia County, culminating with the top story on New Year's Day. Then we will begin the top 100 stories of 2008 in greater New Smyrna Beach. In addition, we will feature an Outstanding Young Person of the Year as well as the Citizen of the Year and Public Servant of the Year. The individual recognition is not necessarily positive or negative, but rather based on news value and impact on the community.
These are our plans for closing 2008 and welcoming everyone to an even better NSBNEWS.net in 2009. We will be much more aggressive and focused in our coverge of local news in 2009, including more expansive countywide news.
Obviously with the downtown in our national economy, it will be even more important for us to follow local and county government spending. More on that in the coming weeks.
But during the holiday stretch, we hope you enjoy our massive rankings, which are sure to stir debate, which is a good thing. Journalism is supposed to engage, especially new age media, which we are. No "light" news or strung-together press releases here. Just strong, community-based reporting and writing with the multi-media emphasis on visual and sound in the form of photos and videos.
If something is happening here in 2009, we'll have it covered for you as soon as possible with even greater emphasis on the "now" in Local News Now.
We will push hard as we begin our marketing and advertising efforts in 2009, but rest assured we will not sell out to advertisers at the expense of news nor will you find any conflicts of interests with our news operation and public boards and commissions and no entanglements. No phony "paid" subscriptions to try and get legal advertising at taxpayer expense in so-called general circulation weeklies that sit on newsstands unsold every week. We will publish all meeting notices for free in 2009 because we want you to have the information. And our electronic community calendars will provide information for non-profits.We will look to the private sector to provide revenue to help us grow in the new year.
You won't find us littering your driveway. We are 100 percent Internet-based and available 24 hours a day with news that is relevant and timely. Our advertising rates are the cheapest around and our readership/viewership is growing. When it comes to media consideration of the environment, NSBNEWS.net is leading the way locally.
Our focus will continue to be daily breaking news as well as enterprise and project reporting, based on years of award-winning metro newspaper reporting experience. My colleague, Peter Mallory, isn't a journalist and doesn't pretend to be. He leaves the journalism to me. He cares about the community he calls home and so do I. Merry Christmas.
Rome wasn't built in a day and neither was NSBNEWS.net, which launched April 11. Our target audience is hard-working families with young children, young adults and senior citizens who enjoy browsing the Web and the consumer-buying public. Remember merchants, just because a print newspaper or shopper is thrown in people's driveways for free doesn't mean they are being taken out of the plastic and read.
We are not only counting on daily hits, but with our recent and planned marketing efforts, we will generate even greater readership. We understand that the Internet is the next generation, but it has arrived and continues to grow. Like anything else, it just takes time.