The above graphic was copied from Google News Directories showing the New Smyrna Beach stories posted on the Internet before dawn. While NSBNews.net had the exclusive on the Hampton Inn, the Daytona Beach News-Journal had yet another CRA-taxpayer funded promotional story.
NSBNews.net continues to generate increasing numbers of unique visitors as demonstrated by our Google Analytics: 1,512 on Friday, 862 on Saturday, 3,968 on Sunday and 3,792 on Monday. We've been averaging about a thousand visitors a day for the last few months. But we expect those numbers to triple really fast. So how are we doing it?
The formula is simple: We're covering the news in our 21st century multi-media format with stories, videos and photos, period. One award-wining journalist and a few volunteer bloggers vs. whole scores of reporters. And we're doing it mostly by ourselves here in Greater New Smyrna Beach. For example, we covered Edgewater City Councilman Ted Cooper's memorial Wednesday, which generated a lot of readers well into Friday. Saturday we had the Toys for Tots train in New Smyrna Beach and Monday we had the exclusive on the NSB beachside hotel project.
Let's see how long it takes the print daily out of Daytona to play catch up with this embarrassing miss in the heart of the CRA district like they did the week before on the CRA grant snafu.
Earlier last week, we broke the story that CRA Chairman Jim Kosmas had repaid the CRA a grant the city determined was illegally provided, its attorneys reversing themselves. On Saturday, we were the only media outlet to provide an actual story on the Toys for Tots train ride stop in New Smyrna Beach, along with a video and photos.
The previous weekend, we stood alone in covering New Smyrna Beach's Christmas Parade, complete with a story, two videos and photos. Before that we covered the Christmas on Canal tree lighting for the third consecutive year, again with a story, videos and photos.
Between Friday and Saturday we had breaking news stories on a big drug raid in New Smyrna Beach, Titusville, Daytona Beach and Deltona that was smashed by the Volusia Bureau of Investigations. We also had a story on a Lake Mary man charged in a stabbing over a drug debt allegedly owed by a Deltona man.
On Sunday and Monday, we reported on the trade situation involving Orland Magic player Dwight Howard. And on Monday, we broke the story, again with video and photos, of the construction beginning anew at the Hampton Inn on NSB's beachside after a 74-day absence since the hyped Sept. 29 groundbreaking.
And we're on the verge of publishing more than a hundred stories on our Investigative Reports, "Show Me the Money: New Smyrna Beach, following two years of reporting on the city's CRA and the small network of public and private interests with their hands on your tax dollars. We know and they know that once this series is published in its entirety, the gig is up. That's why they're all so quiet.
The series will begin hopefully Wednesday, if not sooner, depending how long city officials want to play out meeting our public records requests.
People are flocking to NSBNews.net because the news is real and honest. We're not in the business of public relations. And remember those who cry the most that we are destroying the community are the ones with the most to lose once the public learns the truth.
Since April 2008, we have gone about reporting the news and that mission is only going to intensify in 2012. We've got the readers, the Internet technology and the journalism. They have control of significant advertising money and the wall of government bureaucracy and lawyers, but for how long?
In the end, the truth always wins out.
