Metrics are great, but some things are more important

I just want to say thank you to our friends, fans and followers for making RiverheadLOCAL.com what we dreamed and hoped it would be. Pete and I really appreciate your support.

Poking around our Google Analytics this morning, I realized that yesterday, Oct. 3, RiverheadLOCAL crossed the 2 MILLION pageview mark for 2012. 

It’s the first time we hit 2 million pageviews in a single calendar year. (This is our third full year of operation — we launched the site on Jan. 3, 2010.) We’re on track to close out the year with more than 2.6 million pageviews, up 35 percent over 2011, when we hit 1,930,000 pageviews by Dec. 31. 

And some time in the next five days, we will be celebrating our 2 millionth visit since we launched in January 2010.

More than half a million people have visited RiverheadLOCAL since we launched: 563,966 unique visitors as of yesterday.

These numbers are exciting, but they’re only numbers and I’m not a numbers kind of gal. That’s why I’m a writer, after all. I’m still struggling to find my way around a spreadsheet, if truth be told.

What matters most to me are the people whose lives we touch, people who touch our hearts, the people whose stories we tell every day— stories of triumph, perseverance, courage, service, dedication, love, heartache and tragedy. The people who make Riverhead the place we’re proud to call home.

That’s what inspires us and motivates us to work as hard as we do — and we do work hard. But it’s a labor of love. We love our work and we love our town.

So, thank you, Riverhead — and beyond — for showing so much love in return. 

Our commitment to you is to always strive for accuracy in our reporting, to respect the people in our community when we report the news (especially the bad news) and to never shirk from asking the tough questions in matters of public policy and government.  

I believe there’s a time and place for getting in people’s faces. The funeral of a loved one is not such a time and place. I got really upset with Newsday this week for publishing on its homepage the close-up of a grieving family at a funeral: the wailing mother of a deceased boy, her face wrenched in pain. Why was that necessary? Her child was not the victim of a crime. (Even if he were, the photo would have still been over the top, in my opinion.)  It was a repulsive invasion of privacy. I was so incensed I even posted a comment on their website.

But that’s always been the difference between big media companies/city tabloids and community newspapers — even the online version of a community newspaper, like ours. They get in people’s faces at times when people are entitled to be left alone. (And, ironically, often fail to do it when it really needs to be done, content with regurgitating official press releases and passing it off as reporting.) They pander to the lowest common denominator— all, no doubt, in the name of boosting metrics. 

I pray to God to help me to never put metrics over morals. 

OK, now, I’d better get to work.  It’s almost 6 a.m. and I’ve been dawdling about for two hours. Yikes!

Denise Civiletti, reporter, editor, digital maven and former newspaper editor and publisher, lives and works in Riverhead. She vaguely remembers having a life away from electronic gadgets before being consumed by her role as a digital-hyperlocal-news-entrepreneur-pioneer — lol— publishing RiverheadLocal.com with her husband Peter Blasl.

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