While we’re on the subject of celebration, we at HomeinHenderson.com have our own cause for joy: our readers.
To be specific, we are overwhelmed by the way y’all have embraced this Web site and turned it into a virtual town square for the exchange of news, opinions and whatever else anyone needs to get off his or her chest.
We could bore you with the statistics for June, our fourth full month in operation: 1,718 unique visitors staying for an average of almost 10 minutes per visit and causing a total of 73,666 hits. But to us, the most important numbers are 516 and 651. This is the 516th article we have posted on the site; y’all have responded, as of this writing, with 651 comments.
It was sometime in the past two weeks, while the city was struggling to create a budget and the editor was on vacation, that the number of comments surpassed the number of posts. We couldn’t be more thrilled.
One limited staff can’t see and cover everything that happens in Henderson and Vance County, but this site provides an opportunity for anyone to be a reporter or a columnist or just a wise (or wise-guy) commentator. It’s our belief that the more people show that they’re watching and they care about what our leaders are doing, the more responsive those leaders will have to be to what the people want and need.
We had a lot of crazy ideas when we went online in late February, but our greatest hope was to become the 21st-century version of the Athenian agora, where the ancient Greeks could exercise free speech to discuss anything and everything. So far, so good.
We’re hoping to make some improvements in the coming months, including a better calendar, a better way to follow the comments when they come fast and furious, and a layout that allows advertisers to join the fun. We also have made arrangements for our first regular columnist, whose debut we anticipate this month.
Thank you for making HomeinHenderson a success so far, and please keep participating. Send us notices of events — meetings, fundraisers, rallies, etc. — and we’ll put them on the calendar. If you read a book you like, send us a brief review, and we’ll add it to our Bookshelf. If you have something you want to say that isn’t related to an article on the site, send us a letter to the editor. If you have suggestions or criticisms for the site that you don’t necessarily want to share with the world, e-mail them to us. (You can send anything to news@homeinhenderson.com, and we’ll make sure it goes to the right place.)
But most of all, just keep coming back and commenting, and we can all enjoy the ride.