On Tuesday ThePerryNews.com stopped by the weekly Perry Kiwanis Club meeting to update the membership on the goings on of the online newspaper.
ThePerryNews.com began in February 2015 as the brainchild of Publisher Jim Caufield. Sports Editor Jeff Webster came on board shortly thereafter, adding his expertise in covering area high school sporting events. The news organization first visited the Perry Kiwanis Club May 26, 2015.
The newsmen told the gathered Kiwanians that the online publication reached 1 million website hits in its first year and by early October should reach the 2 million mark. They said about two-thirds of their readers are women, a fact humorously received by the members because all the Kiwanians attending Tuesday’s luncheon were men.
ThePerryNews.com attracts between 140,000 and 150,000 views per month, they said, and they recently had their highest one-day total with more than 12,500 views.
“There was just a lot going on that day,” Webster said.
“At 12,541 views in one day, that’s more than your local shopper mails out in a week,” Caufield said, “How many of those shoppers actually get looked at is anybody’s guess but when we say ThePerryNews.com was looked at 12,500 in a day, we know every one of those was a real click and not just some sort of possible click based on fuzzy math.”
ThePerryNews.com leads all other local media in that it can cover and report on breaking events as soon as they occur 24 hours per day. Typically, the most read stories for the online publication on an average day are the police reports and the obituaries, they said.
“We prefer to publish good news about Perry,” Caufield said, “stories that tell about people’s accomplishments and about new businesses opening up. There’s enough bad news in the world, and I guess we have our share here, too.”
Welcoming Publisher Jim Caufield and Sports Editor Jeff Webster was 19-year Perry Kiwanis Club member and Club Secretary Doug Wood.
