Today, May 2, 2024 is officially our first birthday. It’s the anniversary of the day that Mike Berry and I made the drive to Geneseo to meet with our website design team to discuss how soon we could launch the website.
For weeks, Mike and I had been tracking down stories, interviewing people and writing them up. As soon as we finished each article, we would email it to Team WTI along with the location of where those stories should go on the site. When we went to Geneseo that day, we expected the process to take a few more days, maybe even a week.
Now just 12 months later, according to our data, last month our website had almost 30,000 unique users or visitors. And in April, page views for the website were 165,000.
When they pulled up our website onto a big screen, we both looked at it amazed and maybe a little shell-shocked. The fruits of our months of labor were right there in front of us. It was perfect. It was everything we imagined and more. We were even more shocked when they asked, “Would you like to launch your website now?”
We had not prepared for it but we looked at each other and both of us said, let’s do it. A few keystrokes later, our website began to come together and within a few hours, The Kewanee Voice was live.
On day one, we had two readers, Mike and I. And we were big fans. Now just 12 months later, according to our data, last month our website had almost 30,000 unique users or visitors. And in April, page views for the website were 165,000.
This morning I had to find a photo in our media library on the website I took from last June. We were pretty bad about labeling our photos back then and I am not going to lie, we haven’t gotten much better, but as I scrolled through the over 3,300 photos in order to find the ones I needed, I saw all of the photos we have taken and used over the last year; and I was reminded of all the meetings we have covered, the organization, sporting and school events, and all of the stories we have told of the people we have met, and I was struck by the enormity of it all.
Tomorrow night we will celebrate our first anniversary, our birthday, by throwing a party for the whole town at the Kewanee Elks at 6:30 p.m. I hope you all will join us for cake, conversation, raffles and laughter. Mike and I and our staff of wonderful writers and board of directors would love to meet our readers. Mike and I couldn’t have done any of what we did without all of them and, of course, all of you.
Come celebrate a year of local news with us. And oh, what a year it’s been.
