FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK: Looking back at where we’ve been

Published 10:00 am Friday, August 18, 2023

When I moved to Oregon from Ohio in 1994, I got here by bicycle.

Along the way, I met a fellow traveler, a bearded gent with a walking stick and a weather-worn face I guessed to be about 60 years old. He gave me a piece of advice that seemed so simple at the time, but which has proven to be more profound as I get older.

We were near Laramie, Wyoming, and the Rocky Mountains loomed on the horizon. It was hard to take me eyes off them, because I had been anticipating those jagged peaks for the past 1,000 miles as I pedaled into the wind across the Midwest and Great Plains.

“When you get to the top of those mountains,” he said, “remember to stop, turn around, and look back at where you’ve been.”

That’s what I’m doing today.

We launched the Rogue Valley Times Feb. 6 this year, giving us six months under our belts.

The milestone provides a perfect opportunity to stop, turn around, and look back at some of the highlights of our first half year.

The 10 stories that garnered the most traffic in the past six months on our website, rv-times.com, are:

• Search and rescue activated as Medford doctor remains missing (30,299 views, 24,833 readers)
• City officials put Medford library on notice (20,086 views, 15,104 readers)
• The Death of Bobbie Kolada, Part 1: ‘Did somebody do this to her?’ (15,460 views, 10,115 readers)
• Sheriff’s office: Still no leads in search for missing Medford doctor (14,650 views, 10,100 readers)
• The old Yellow Basket drive-in restaurant in Central Point will become second Skout location (14,612 views, 10,957 readers)
• Gold Hill man says he’s not crying wolf after attack (13,485 views, 11,592 readers)
• Local dad killed in fall while trying to save boys (12,651 views, 10,448 readers)
• Father of Parkland, Florida, school shooting victim faces local charges (12,124 views, 10,787 readers)
• New Crater Lake tour boats arrive Monday — by air (12,066 views, 10,558 readers)
• Medford dad speaks out after unsettling bike ride on the Greenway (10,694 views, 8,178 readers)

The 10 stories that got the most attention on social media are:

• The old Yellow Basket drive-in restaurant in Central Point will become second Skout location 
• New Crater Lake tour boats arrive Monday — by air 
• Male wolf struck, killed by vehicle 30 miles north of Crater Lake
• Another wolf that might be unwary of humans spotted near Crater Lake 
• ‘We’re obviously happy’: Amazon distribution center planned for Central Point
• Central Point father’s final ‘Big Daddy Boom’ fireworks show is ‘gonna be awesome’ 
• Popular principal at South Medford High School moving on ‘in new directions’
• School board, superintendent address employee questions about new South Medford High School principal 
• Turnover of principals prompts questions about ‘this pattern of departures’ in Medford schools 
• Tree Top plant in Medford to close in September 

It is endlessly fascinating for us to decipher the online reading habits of our website visitors, and it would be equally helpful to know whether reading habits and preferences are different for people who read the print paper. We have almost three times as many print subscribers as digital-only subscribers. How do their interests and reading habits differ?

Do print subscribers read editorials and letters to the editor more or less than online readers?

Do print subscribers spend more time reading the paper than online readers, and do print subscribers read more or fewer stories? On Thursday, for instance, about 7,500 people visited rv-times.com and clicked on more than 39,000 pages. Those visitors clicked on an average of 5.9 stories each, and they spent an average of 2.4 minutes reading. It would be good to know how that compares to print readers.

Maybe we’ll do a readership survey some day to get a feel for those numbers. It used to be common for newspapers to conduct readership surveys from time to time, but it’s expensive and fewer newspapers do it these days.

I look forward to the next six months. And next February, I’ll take another look back to trace our tracks.

Thanks for coming along on the journey.

— David Smigelski, Rogue Valley Times editor