So, where were we?

Hi all,

We're back ... sort of. RacinePost will return in a limited form with an updated front page at www.racinepost.com and sporadic posting on this blog, Racine Kiosk, and our Obits page.

It won't be anything like what we were doing before, but we'll be dipping into local news and promoting community events. If you have some news you'd like to get out, send it to us at: racinepost@gmail.com

Cheers,

Dustin & Pete

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Note to readers

Dear Readers,

A quick note on changes underway at RacinePost. After 2 1/2 year, we're getting (somewhat) serious about this little website's business model. We're getting great daily support from the community, enough that we can start planning to expand our news, advertising and business operations. We've always operated out in the open, so we wanted to to update you on some exciting improvements to our business.

Here's what we're working on ... 

1. The redesign is continually evolving, but we're happy so far with the results. It's created a number of featured advertising spaces to generate clicks and brand recognition for local businesses. Learn more about advertising on RacinePost at: www.racinepost.com/advertise.html 

2. Our readers are incredibly supportive. Many have asked about "subscribing" to RacinePost over the years and we've never really had a good model for it - until now. In the right sidebar you'll see a link for a service called Kachingle. Through the service, you sign up to pay $5 per month and the money is distributed based on how often you visit sites with "kachingle" medallions. Once you sign up, Kachingle works automatically. It's a great way to support sites like RacinePost at a relatively low cost. As a side note, we see about 8,000 unique visitors a month (with many coming back on a regular basis). Even a fraction of this number signing with Kachingle would create a significant revenue stream to keep RacinePost going - and growing.

3. We're now offering media consulting business for small businesses and organizations looking to expand and improve their presence on the Internet. There are several free or low-cost options available online that will help you attract new customers and clients. We can help you implement these services and ensure you know how to use and update them without paying regular maintenance fees. Contact Dustin Block for information about our media consulting services.

We have great hope for the future of RacinePost and what it can bring to the community. Thank you to all who have brought us this far. We're truly appreciative for your support. 

-Dustin and Pete

This is our 3,000th story!

Thanks everybody!

Reader survey results

Thanks to everybody who filled out our recent online survey. Here's what we learned about RacinePost readers (or at least the ones who will out online surveys):

Response

Over four days, 328 people answered the survey.

Age

Nearly all of the respondents (94.8 percent) were 30 years old or older, with just under half (49.1 percent) between 41 and 60 years old. Just one person under 20 years old responded to the survey, while seven people between 81 and 90 years old responded.

Frequency

We have some dedicated readers. Just over a third of the respondents said they visit RacinePost several times per day, while another third said they visit once per day and nearly everyone else said they visit a few times per week. Our hope is to create a dynamic website with a regular supply of fresh content, so we're very happy with this response.

What people like to read

Here's the Top 5 topics respondents said they like to read about:

1. Local government
2. Local business
3. Investigative news
4. Good news
5. Local people

And the bottom five topics:

5. Health care
4. Federal government
3. Theater
2. Music
1. Bars

Findings here are largely reflective of the areas we've focused on the past 2-1/2 years. We'd really like to do more with the local arts and entertainment scene, but we've made a name for ourselves focusing on local government and business.

What people would like to see 

We asked people would they would like to read more of on RacinePost. Here's the top 5:

1. Investigative news
2. Local business
3. Local residents
4. Good news
5. Events

And the bottom five:

5. Nonprofits
4. Music
3. Theater
2. Federal government
1. Bars

No surprise on the investigative news - that should be any news organization's top priority. In the last few months we're hearing a lot of people talk about a local need for more stories about local businesses, so that's something we're really going to take a look at.

Comments

We received 190 written comments from respondents. A large majority of the comments were positive, and for those, truly, thank you. Negative comments can be clumped into three areas:

1. Several respondents said they are turned off by the negative comments/blogs at the end of our stories. Many people would also like us to eliminate anonymous comments.

2. Editorial bias. Always a touchy issue with any news source, but some respondents said they would like us to more clearly delineate between news and opinion, with more of a focus toward unbiased local news stories.

3. People would like to see a less "cluttered" design with fewer old stories on the front page.

Happily, I can report we are working on all three of the areas with a new site design that will bring greater accountability to the comments, clearly organize stories and opinions into separate categories and reduce the clutter on our home page. (I know we've talked about this new site for awhile, but we're close to ironing out the last few bugs, mostly related to how long it takes the page to load. Hopefully (fingers crossed) this will be worked out soon, because the new site has some great new features we're excited to offer.)

Conclusions

For our first survey, we're very happy with the response and thank everyone for taking the time to answer our questions. We're planning on a few more to try and get a clearer picture of who we're writing for and what you'd like to see on the Post. Reader feedback is incredibly important to us, and these surveys seem like a quick, unintrusive way to reach people. Again, thanks so much!

Fun with Google Analytics

We do our best to track traffic to RacinePost to gauge interest in stories and the site in general. Checking in with Google Analytics this morning, there are some cool stats about the site:

* In the last month, we've had visitors from 46 of the 50 states to our main page. The holdouts include: West Virginia, Vermont, Maine and Wyoming.

* We had 118 visitors from Europe, 49 from Asia, 3 from Africa and one from Australia.

* We had 31 visitors from Sweden, 33 from the UK and 34 from Germany.

* The three African visits came from Egypt.

* 30 visitors clicked on the site from Japan.

* Of course, Wisconsin was the main source of visits with just under 50,000 visits in the past month. About 35,000 of the visitors came from Racine County to the main page.

* Overall, we had about 55,000 visits to RacinePost's front page in the past month with visitors loading the page 150,000 times.

These numbers don't include traffic to our three blogs (news.racinepost.com, obits.racinepost.com and kiosk.racinepost.com), which more than double our traffic and bring in even more visitors from around the country and the world.

It's pretty cool to see how one little website can span the globe. Amazing times we're living in ...

RacinePost sets record audience numbers

Big thanks to RacinePost readers for making this our best week ever for page views and unique visitors. If this was your first visit to RacinePost, please come back and bring a friend. Together we'll build a truly local place for news, advertising, entertainment and community.

Gratefully, Dustin and Pete

Support RacinePost advertisers

One RacinePost's major goals is to create an affordable, effective advertising vehicle for local businesses. We strongly believe in "buying local" and strongly encourage our readers to think Racine first when shopping for goods and services. (Dollars spent locally stay in the community and support local businesses and jobs.)

We're fortunate at RacinePost to have a number of local advertisers that believe in what we're doing, both as a news provider in Racine and as a way to tell the community about their businesses and services. We'd like to take a minute and thank them for their support.

Our newest advertisers are Piranha Gaming at 234 Main St. in Downtown Racine and the LGBT Center of Southeast Wisconsin.

Piranha Gaming is a great video game store specializing in console repairs and sales, and selling new and used video games. They're off to a great start and have big plans to expand in 2010.

The LGBT Center is holding its "Great Gay Yard Sale" this weekend at the center, located at 1456 Junction Ave. in Racine. Stop by from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday and 2-5 p.m. on Sunday.

We're also lucky to have an ad from Educator's Credit Union, which is featuring a 3.49% APR Home Equity Line of Credit. Please visit their website to learn more about their financial services.

Hop To It at DP Wigley is a long-time supporter of RacinePost and the heart of a burgeoning homebrew movement in Racine. Homebrewers swear by their supplies and they have full winemaking kits, as well.

Sebastian's is celebrating its 10th anniversary this month as one of southeastern Wisconsin's top restaurants. Plan a special night out to enjoy a decade of gourmet food and fine dining in a beautiful farm house setting. (And check out owner Scott Sebastian's great food blog, Salty's Kitchen.)

Merchants Moving & Storage Company is another long-time, and greatly appreciated, RacinePost supporter. This local company was founded in 1922 and is one of the few independent professional moving companies in the country. They're a great Racine company that really cares about the city.

Big thanks also go out to the Racine Theatre Guild (see Alice in Wonderland this weekend!), the Insider News, Lakeview Pharmacy, Racine on the Lake Tobacco Free Coalition and Ad Vantage Promotions for their advertising and support.

If you're interested in advertising on RacinePost, contact Pete or Dustin at: racinepost@gmail.com

Common Sense: Notable comments from the blogs

Many comments on RacinePost.com's articles are quick bursts of emotion that respond to issues and stories on the surface. Others take a deeper look at issues. Common Sense highlights well-written, thoughtful comments on the blogs.

From "The mayor's 10-year plan":

I understand that some will want to just let the mayor slide on this because they like him personally or they see some progress or even potential.

And then there are the rest of us that actually listened to the man and were inspired by what we thought was his vision and expected him to deliver and will not be satisfied until he does. Key to that vision is the development of something that is actually needed - a long term vision or in his words "a Top 10 City in 10 year plan."

There are no excuses at this point. None. I defy anyone to post on here why it is acceptable for Dickert to campaign on this idea and not deliver. Because Treasures expanded? Because he renamed an area to Riverview? Because he supports regional transit?

All unacceptable as excuses, I'm sorry.

And you cannot develop a plan after the results start coming in. That's beyond insane. My 10 year plan was to create 88 jobs this year. I reached the goal! Yes! Sure glad I announced my benchmark after the game was played!

C'mon mayor....get it done. Yes, we understand it is difficult, but it is needed and you're the one that promised it. Where are the benchmarks? Where are the goals? What is a top city?

The reality is he promised it, found out it was pretty hard to do and then quit - hoping to pass off the budget as a plan and that nobody would notice so he wouldn't have to follow through. We know the game - divert attention away from your failure by pointing to a couple of accomplishments. Case in point - Here's what you might here next out of his mouth:

To Dickert: Can you tell me about the 10 year plan?

Dickert: I think what is important here is that jobs are being created and crime is decreasing. I helped bring 88 jobs to Racine hiring people in Racine that need it the most. 41 gangsters are now off the streets and our citizens are safer for it with the drug busts. That's what I measure myself by and how the city measures success.

Yawn....sounds great, thanks. We've all been had.

Should RacinePost require registration on comments?

RacinePost's redesign is fast approaching completion. You can see progress here. Obviously there's some work to be done, but most of the big hurdles are out of the way and it's now just Photoshopping and adding stories.

We're still contemplating what to do about anonymous comments. We'd like to throw this out to readers: Should we require readers to register a username and email address to comment on stories?

From our end, we go back and forth on this. Right now we're leaning against mandatory registration. The new site will require commenters to enter a username. It also allows us to track IP addresses and block certain users from commenting, and gives readers the right to report inappropriate comments. Paired with aggressive review of comments on our end, we believe, for now, an open comment system is workable.

But we can be swayed. So what do you think? Yes or no to registration for comments? Your feedback will go a long way toward helping us make a decision. (And if you have questions, post them below and we'll respond throughout the day.)

Notes on RacinePost ...

As we continue to develop our new home (see progress here), Pete and I have been thinking a lot about advertising, news, comments and generally our hopes for RacinePost's future. In a simple sense, our hope is RacinePost continues to add readers, expand coverage and become a successful little business. Soon we'll be rolling out a new advertising rate card, new sections for stories and several additional features we hope will connect with readers while making our operation more efficient and robust.

But there's another aspect to RacinePost I'd like to do a better job of sharing. We really do exist to support and help the Racine area community. Our top priority is to celebrate local success by publishing accomplishments, promoting local businesses, covering interesting stories and showcasing the people, places and events that make Racinians proud. But we're not big enough (at least not yet) to do it on our own. We need your help.

But before I get into asking a favor, a diversion on local media. It seems a community news source (be it a paper, radio station, website, magazine, TV station) is only as useful as its ability to inform and connect its readers. If RacinePost isn't reporting timely, helpful material for people in the Racine area there's no reason for the site to exist. Anything else is simply stealing for personal gain, which is not a sustainable model for a business that relies heavily on public participation for support.

For example, publishers around the country are making money publishing the mugshots of people arrested in their community. Like pornography, it's popular, lucrative and entirely legal (even without the people arrested having gone to trial, or even having been charged). But also like pornography it's bankrupt of common decency and adds little to the community (other than reinforcing negative stereotypes and scaring people away).

This is a different view than almost all media companies, which exist to make money first, second and third. Supporting community may fall within their Top 50 priorities, but that's not entirely clear.

Here's an example. While I worked for the JT, a circulation director would sit in on story planning meetings and direct us to make murders, fires, robberies and any other big crime story the top story on the front page. Why? Because they'd sell a few hundred more copies of papers in stores and out of paper boxes. While I'm not longer on the inside, little from the outside appears to have changed at the JT in the past two years. (To be fair, many people at the JT see the same problems I'm describing and would like to see changes. But the newspaper culture, which dates back decades, is simply too strong for anyone to re-wire.)

RacinePost is trying a different approach. We're all for making money, but it's not our reason for existence. We're much, much more interested in doing everything we can to help local businesses, organizations, events and people succeed. Our goal is to tell as many people as possible about the great, interesting, important and exciting things happening in the Racine area. If you're a business, we want to know about every event, product, story and success you have. If you're a nonprofit, we want to know what you need to continue doing your work. It's the same for every church, school, group, club, sports league, etc., etc.

Here's where we need your help. If you share interesting, wonderful stories with us, we can share them with thousands of people, who hopefully will pass the word on to thousands of more people. Hopefully, if we stick at this long enough, these are the stories that will become the "news of the day" - and the foundation for new ideas, growth and success to emerge.

Let me end with specifics. If you know any place where people are having fun, we'd love to hear about it. If you know a business that is doing impressive work, please, let us know. If you know of an upcoming event that people should attend, send it over. If you know a local story that will inspire others, let's share it together.

I'll come back to this theme from time to time, but if you'd like to start today, our email address is: racinepost@gmail.com. We'll do everything we can to include your stories on the site.

Note on RacinePost comments

We're getting a lot of comments about our comments these days. It's a good problem for us because it means we're reaching a critical mass in the community. But it's still a problem.

The main issue is the negative comments on just about every story. It doesn't take long for discussions to turn personal, nasty, inappropriate and counterproductive to our efforts of promoting positive dialogue about Racine. Our challenge is addressing these comments without stifling debate and reader interaction, which is immensely helpful in running a news website. (For example, JJ McAuliffe corrected one of my stories this morning. I made the change the story is more accurate for it.)

We delete comments on a fairly regular basis. Nearly all of those comments are an unsubstantiated attack on someone's personal character, but we have no set policy. It's like the Supreme Court ruling on obscenity: We know an offensive comment when we see it.

Other comments we let stand, but respond to. For example, I jumped in on Alderman Bob Mozol's behalf because my experience is he's a sincere, hard-working politician who deserves better than to be insulted by an anonymous blogger. But he's also an elected official subject to public ridicule; it's part of the job. Same with comments about the Post. We generally let them stand because we believe in giving people their say. But we don't expect everyone to take on a thick skin; that's not fair of us to ask.

So that's the problem and our current responses to negative comments. Hardly satisfying, right? I'd like to propose a new alternative. We are shifting to a registration system, but it's taking awhile to work out the bugs and there's no guarantee it'll stop the negative comments (ie. The Journal Times).

From what I can tell, negative commenters make up about 10 percent of our readership. They're a vocal 10 percent, but they're definitely outnumbered. It's up to the rest of us to drown out their voices. We all support and believe in our community, so let's say so. If you see a negative comment, respond with something overtly positive. Here's some examples:

• I love North Beach. What a great resource for Racine.
• The triathlon is in town this weekend. What a great event!
• First Friday was hopping last month. Can't wait for the next one!
• Kringle!

Just go with whatever pops into your head. Let's wash away the negative comments with a collective effort to present a positive image of Racine. This post will be our first test. No doubt someone will make a cynical, negative comment in the first few minutes. Respond with an optimistic, positive comment. You can change the tone with a few words. Give it a try!

On a related note, I'm thinking through a letter-writing idea that focuses on what we like about the city. We'd create a written record of the many wonderful things about Racine, from Kewpee's to Frank Lloyd Wright buildings, to the REC center and so on. If we can create a written history of what we love and support in Racine, officials in power will have something to rely on if they ever need to make a decision about the Zoo, the library, Monument Square, farmer's markets, the Root River, golf courses, etc.

But more on that later ... for now, let's try hard to keep it positive.

2,000 and counting ...

Please excuse the self promotion, but RacinePost hit a mini-milestone over the holiday weekend. We posted our 2,000^th story on our main blog since it was started on Sept. 29, 2007. That averages out to about three news posts a day (not including Racine Kiosk, Pete's haiku posts, Obituaries, ads and the dozens of links we post weekly.)

Truly, thank you to our readers for your support and comments. You keep us going and push us to keep expanding. Here's to the next 2,000 posts!

Main page is down

The main page at www.racinepost.com is down right now due to a technical problem with our web host, StartLogic. We'll let you know when the site is back up.

A note on competition

Just a quick note on competition in reporting Racine's news. We're in a really interesting race with the JT to report on the city.

The Uptown sculpture is a good example. We reported on the sculpture June 4 and the JT came back with a story today revealing the sculpture cost $40,000 (we had incorrectly reported it was donated to the city). Now we've responded with the latest story providing some background on the Uptown artist program and reporting at least one alderman is upset at the total cost.

That's the great thing about competition in the news business. Nobody ever gets the whole story the first time around. The back-and-forth of competing stories shakes out new information. It also keeps everyone honest. It's hardly a coincidence that newsroom hiring at the JT is at record highs as RacinePost and other local websites develop into a real threat to their business.

The downside for us is we liberally link to the JT and credit them for work. On the flip side, the JT never acknowledges our work despite liberally stealing our stories. Not that we blame them, but it's an interesting wrinkle in the debate over whether newspapers are fairly compensated for their stories. Newspapers claim their value is deteriorating because outside sites are linking to them (that's why there's all this chatter about charging for online news), but it's our experience that it's newspapers that steal work without so much as a link back to the original story.

Not that any of this matters to readers. Hopefully, the competition between RacinePost and the JT results in better information, coverage and insights into our community. That's certainly our goal, and hopefully that goal rubs off on our local newspaper as well.

We could use your help ...

Dear Readers,

When the city editor at The Journal Times hired me as a reporter 10 years ago, the first thing he said was: "Racine is a newsy town. Weird things happen here." The last few weeks have certainly proven that true, and hopefully RacinePost has been able to dig into the mayor's arrest and resignation and provide some meaningful competition to our daily newspaper.

So what would you think about us doing this full time?

I've been giving a lot of thought to the future of RacinePost and what we can do to grow and improve the site. Right now, Pete and I put the daily site together as a labor of love. (Actually, Pete does a lot of the daily work while I scrounge together a living as a freelance writer.) We're beyond grateful for the number of people who visit RacinePost to scan headlines, read stories and add comments. In our first months, I dreamed of 1,000 daily readers. We're now over that number, and growing on a monthly basis. My greedy mind now hopes for 5,000 (or 10,000!) daily readers, but we have some work to do to get there.

So how do we do it? Here's the plan for the coming months:

1. Complete a redesign that will bring all of RacinePost's sections under "one roof," and add several reader features including a Forum, Reader Blogs, Photo Galleries, a Community Calendar and submitted stories.

2. Ramp up our reporting resources so we're covering more local stories in more depth.

3. Install a system to increase our ad inventory and track advertising on the site. Our goal is to create an affordable, effective advertising solution for local businesses.

4. Create a marketing campaign to solidify our presence in the community.

We need your help to make it possible. Today we're launching a drive to fund RacinePost through reader subscriptions. It's an experiment to find out if independent community journalism can come up with the resources to fund a full-time operation.

"Subscription" here doesn't mean anything exclusive. RacinePost will always be free, whether you contribute or not. Initially, subscriptions will be used to pay us a reasonable salary (trust me, this will be very reasonable) and cover expenses related to the redesign, advertising system and marketing campaign. As we grow, subscriptions will go to hiring additional staff and reporters.

We're really hoping this can be a Racine-powered site. Even a few dollars on a recurring basis would go a long way to supporting RacinePost and establishing a purely local independent news source.

You can make a contribution by clicking here. So let's do this thing! I think it'll be exciting. More to come throughout the week ...

RacinePost.com seeks local, positive writing

Hi all,

RacinePost.com is coming up on its one-year anniversary, and I wanted to give an early thanks to everyone for making this site a success. I also wanted to share an idea for adding more content to RacinePost and, hopefully, bringing attention to local people and organizations doing exceptional work.

Here's the idea: Many organizations in the area have a newsletter filled with stories, events, highlights and wealth of other information. We'd like to reprint these stories on RacinePost. We can't pay (At least not yet) but we would give full attribution and link to wherever the authors would like.

To be sure, we get something out of this. It's a chance to include more local voices on our site talking about positive, exciting activities going on in the Racine area. Hopefully, that will bring more readers to the website.

But in the coming months we'd like to aggressively court the good in Racine. It's easy to report crime and negatives, because that information is readily available to the media. It's more difficult to find the good, because the people often doing the work are too busy or disinterested in self promotion to get the word out about their deeds. While that's tough to change, I think a lot of good stories are already out there. We're hoping to collect them in one place so more people can read them, and in turn, hopefully write more good stories. Before we know it, we may even be able to present the positive view of our city that so many of us already have.

If you're interested, please contact me at: dustin.block@gmail.com. Also, please pass this along to anyone who writes or edits local newsletters. We really want to get the word out on this.

Thanks much! Dustin

PHOTOBOOF! makes its debut on First Friday

Monte Osterman watches the kids have fun inside,
while RacinePost's Dustin Block mans the controls

RacinePost gave birth Friday night to PHOTOBOOF!

If you weren't downtown on First Friday, you have no idea what I'm talking about. But if you were, then you probably joined in the fun, as we brought our newest offspring out to play for the first time.

Parked in front of Copacetic on Main Street, our PHOTOBOOF! drew a crowd all night, as our interpretation of the old-time mall photo booth did its thing flawlessly. Men, women and children of all ages went into the booth -- many hesitantly -- and quickly became all smiles as the photo countdown began. SAY CHEESE! it said, before flashing off four pictures, and producing one of those strips of photos some of us remember fondly.

We had couples, young and old; families; sisters; the recently face-painted; a Congressional candidate and her father; a librarian; a couple proclaiming their engagement. About as eclectic a mix as you could find.

If you missed it... well, just wait until Party on the Pavement on Saturday, Oct. 4, when we bring the BOOF! out to play again.

Meanwhile, all our PHOTOBOOF! pictures from First Friday are online. See yourself, or your friends, making funny faces, smooching, or just having a good time. Which is what Downtown Racine is all about. Glad we could help.

Note: Our page of BOOF! pictures is a large one, and takes a while to load. Be patient! After it loads, right-click on any strip to enlarge. We'll figure out a way to make the page load more quickly as soon as we can.

Our first BOOF! photostrip: Monte Osterman and his daughter

BOOF! photos are for kids of all ages!

500th post!

We hit something of a milestone this morning ... our 500th post on this blog. We're approaching our 5-month anniversary, which averages out to 100 posts a month. Not bad for a couple of part-timers working on a shoestring.

Seriously, a thousand thank you's to everyone who has read RacinePost in recent months. You keep us going. For what it's worth, here's our first post.

Wanted: Citizen reporters to cover City Council meetings

Interested in local government? Want to get involved? We have an opportunity for you.

RacinePost is looking for ambitious volunteers to help report on Racine city government. No experience is required, but you do have to be willing to attend city meetings and write up what happened.

We'll help with the writing. Your job is to be the eyes and ears for the website to report on what's happening when our officials meet. Most city meetings have no media in attendance, so we'd like that to change.

But we need help. The hope is to build a network of reporters to cover as many city meetings as possible. The reporting will be straight forward: what happened, what were the issues discussed, how did the committee vote, etc.

If you're interested, contact Dustin (dustin.block@gmail.com) for more info.

RacinePost gets Farked

Popular website Fark.com linked to RacinePost last night, bringing thousands of people to the site to read Pete's post on the Atheist pyramid built next to the Nativity Scene on Monument Square.

There are about 100 comments so far on the post, and our site traffic is through the roof. Most readers are from out of town, and we certainly aren't trying to be the center of a debate over religion and atheism. Still, it's fun to get the attention.

Thanks to the reader who submitted our site to Fark. Much appreciated!