Archive: Opinions

Wednesday was the actual 10th anniversary of the Lansing Star, and today marks the 10th Anniversary issue.  Our first issue was published July 22, 2005, about four months after my wife Karen and I decided to publish a local online newspaper.  We would cover the Town and Village of Lansing for 'hard news' and stretch out across Tompkins County, especially for Business and Entertainment news.  The Star is half of what our little company does -- we also build Web sites for clients, another form of online publishing.


When we started the Star in 2005 I didn't know what to expect.  I had been working from home for America Online, and had gotten to a point where to continue working at the company I would have had to move to northern Virginia where it is located.  Karen and I even looked at houses, but it was clear that would not be a great option for our family.  I wanted to continue in online publishing, and Karen had the idea of starting a newspaper.

I spoke to Matthew Shulman, who, with his wife Aline, published the Lansing Community News (LCN) for 5 years from 1996 to 2000.  Matthew gave me lots of good advice and encouragement, and even wrote an editorial for our first issue.  Karen and I have always viewed the Star as LCN's child and I hope we have measured up, at least a little.

When I first walked into local municipal meetings I thought I would get to sit in the back, take notes, and occasionally snap pictures.  Somewhat to my horror I was asked who I was, which meant I had to speak to strangers in a public meeting.  When I told them Town, Village, School and Fire District officials were all warm and welcoming.  The Town Supervisor Steve Farkas already knew about the Star, as he had been in contact with Matthew on the phone (the Shulmans had moved to North Carolina).  We were also encouraged by some of the local businesses, particularly by the late Kirk Shreve, who bought the first ad we sold in the Star for Lansing Funeral Home (the current owner, Lisa Auble, has continued to run in the most prominent spot in the Star at the top of the front page -- it has run in every single issue since the beginning).

In ten years I have written 3,282 of the 11,171 articles we have published as of this issue.  Over that time we have enjoyed 19,670,849 article hits (as of this writing).  An article hit is when a reader clicks the 'Read More' button to read a full article.  The Star has many more views than hits because, as with any newspaper, many readers like to scan the headlines, or visit pages that are counted differently such as Movie Times, Puzzles, or Weather.We get between 8,000 and 10,000 unique visitors per month, and around 250,000 page hits per month.

When you consider that the entire population of the Town and Village of Lansing combined is 11,000, that's not bad.  Though we're not claiming all our readers are here in Lansing.  A number of Lansing expatriates read the Star from all around the world, and we get a significant number of hits from search engines, especially on articles of general interest.  Remember the Aztec Calendar scare?  We got over 10,000 hits on a story entitled 'World Won't End, NASA Says' that week in large part because the story showed up on the first page of Google search results for at least three days that week.

Hits are fairly steady through the week, but on Fridays when the new issues come out, they really spike.  More readers read the Star at 8am than any other time of the day, though our statistics show many active readers every hour of the day.  As an insomniac who checks stats at all hours on Friday mornings, I know that a surprising number access the Star the moment a new issue is published.

We are grateful for all our advertisers, but I want to single out Geoff Wright because he has advertised with us since Volume 2, Issue 5 (the February 3rd, 2006 issue) to support the Sports page.  Now Geoff knows that Karen and I are both sports impaired (me more than Karen as it turns out), and I have to point out that if you are 'challenged' there is hope of meeting that challenge, but if you are 'impaired' there is no hope whatsoever.  But even if I can't write about sports, I can write about our Sports Page:

Even if I understood or knew how to write about sports, our Mom and Pop newspaper doesn't have the reporters to go to all the games and cover them regularly.  So our idea was to provide a venue for coaches, students or parents to write about local athletes and teams.  This means we get what we get when we get it (and when we get reports they are generally fabulous.  Even I can tell that.  Some of the sports reports over the years have been breathtaking reenactments of games that placed the spotlight on young Lansing athletes who really deserve the recognition.  But it also means that sometimes we don't have sports news.  That Geoff has been willing to support that page for nine and a half years to keep that venue alive has been a gift to the whole community.  I happen to know that Geoff doesn't need to advertise in the Star and only does so to support sports in Lansing.  By far that's not all he does to support Lansing athletics, but it is one thing.

My favorite part of the Star is meeting a lot of very interesting people, and learning about what they are doing.  My least favorite part is writing editorials because I don't think I'm that interesting and don't know why anyone should care what I have to say.  Still, the competitive part of me manages disappointment when the editorials rank between the middle and the bottom of the 'Read More' hits statistics list.  Which they always do.  At the same time more people personally tell me they have read the editorials than any other articles.  So statistically most people agree with me that what I have to say isn't that interesting, but anecdotally I am fascinating. 

One of the first things I learned was that publishing an online newspaper is a LOT more humbling than publishing a print edition.  The reason is simple: the Editor of a print newspaper gets to decide which stories he or she thinks are important, and gets to think the readers agree simply by virtue of the circulation numbers.  Every week I see actual statistics on a story by story basis that shows categorically which stories readers though were interesting or important enough to click that 'Read more' button.  So a print editor can assume he or she is always right, while an online editor is proven wrong on a regular basis.

For me the best outcome is for editorials to inspire Letters to the Editor, because that means some community discussion has been sparked.  I love to publish opposing views, and have rejected only a very small number of letters over the years, generally on the grounds that they were inaccurate, were trying to use the newspaper to publicize a personal grudge, or were abusive in the sense of being too long or too frequent.  The idea is to get the community engaged with itself, only using the Star as a conduit.

Karen gets the credit for that.  She insisted that if we were going to publish a Lansing newspaper that it should be a virtual 'Main Street' in a town that doesn't have an actual Main Street.  She made sure we supported local service clubs by buying ads in the Lion's Club pancake breakfast menu and high school theater programs, establishing an annual award for a Lansing High School graduate, brings a gallon of milk to the North Lansing Auxiliary Election Dinner and Supper, and becoming a sponsor for community events such as the former Lansing Harbor Festival.  We have also been a media sponsor for the Kitchen Theatre in Ithaca.

One of the most rewarding partnerships the Star has enjoyed has been our media partnership with WHCU Radio.  Over the years Geoff Dunn, Dave Vieser, Greg Fry, and Lee Rayburn, along with the whole Cayuga Radio Group tribe have been just plain great people.  They have been very supportive to what we do, and we try to be the same for them.  Some of my favorite Lansing Star interviews over the years were of Greg (2013) when he came back to WHCU to replace Geoff Dunn as News Director, and Lee (2012) and Dave (2006) when they first began hosting the Morning Newswatch.  Also farewell interviews with Geoff Dunn in 2012 and Dave's Morning Newswatch predecessor Casey Stevens in 2006.  Why?  Because it's fun to turn the tables and interview the interviewers.

When the LCL stopped publishing in 2000 I felt like a giant sink hole had opened up in our community.  I had felt connected to the community because of Matthew's articles and the local ads in that newspaper, and now that connection was gone.  All I have hoped for in the past ten years is that the Lansing Star has brought back that sense of community connection for our neighbors here.  And in some way has become part of the fabric of this great community.

v11i29