From the editor’s desk: 2 million and counting
Published 1:14 pm Friday, May 5, 2023
- RV Times sign
The Rogue Valley Times achieved a milestone this week. On Thursday, the paper reached 2 million page views.
Trending
We launched our website Feb. 6 and hit one million page views March 27. That means we recorded our second million in 38 days.
Our analytics report showed that 297,404 individuals visited rv-times.com during that period.
The four stories that drew the most reader interest last month were all written by Buffy Pollock: “City officials put Medford library on notice,” “Gold Hill man says he’s not crying wolf after attack,” “Local dad killed in fall while trying to save boys,” and “Gold Hill man wasn’t attacked by wolf, wildlife officials say.”
Trending
In addition to measuring which stories get the most readership, we like to know which stories get the most engagement from readers on social media — shares, comments, likes, etc.
In April, the story with the highest engagement rate was a piece by Erick Bengel headlined “Medford Urban Campground renamed Rogue Crossings” — a whopping 50.99% of people who read that story shared it, liked it or otherwise engaged with it. That is a phenomenal number, but other stories were nearly as dynamic.
Forty-seven percent of people who read a story by Morgan Rothborne about invasive flatworms being found in a Medford garden engaged with it. A story by Erick Bengel about Providence ER workers voting to unionize inspired an engagement rate of 46.96%.
This week we began publishing election stories, which were timed with the arrival of ballots in local mailboxes. In some ways it’s not a big, sexy election. We’re not electing a president, governor, senators or state reps. We’re voting for school board members and filling district boards that deal with libraries, sewers and public transportation.
We’ll be very interested to see what kind of readership those stories attract. As journalists, we consider election coverage to be one of our most important jobs. We hope readers feel the same way and take the time to read up on the local people competing for the opportunity to serve on these volunteer bodies.
Our police and courts reporter Kevin Opsahl invested a lot of his time this past week to covering the trial of Robert Keegan, who is accused of murdering Aidan Ellison in Ashland in 2020. The case has attracted a lot of attention locally because Keegan is white and Ellison was Black, and the killing occurred during the tumultuous year that saw the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin.
The trial is expected to continue into next week, and if it does, Kevin Opsahl will learn the definition of multi-tasking, because another high-profile murder trial is scheduled to begin Monday that grabbed headlines when police reported the victim, 24-year-old Aaron Stitt, had been found stuffed in a refrigerator. Police believe that Austin McLeod, whose trial starts Monday, was complicit with two other men, including his brother, in the death of Stitt on Sept. 25, 2021.
— David Smigelski, Rogue Valley Times editor