We'd like to take the opportunity to thank you, our readers, for your continued support, and let you know how it's been going and where we plan to take this project.
During the fall of 2006 we had been conceptualizing how we'd approach news production in what we considered to be a limited media landscape at the time.
Between us we had significant journalism, technology and management experience in addition to formal educations. We figured if we were going to try to create a news outlet we'd want it to be faster, more responsive and more in-depth than the examples we'd known.
We decided the way to do it was by interacting with the community and giving deep detail about the stories we covered.
We talked it over, registered a Web site, spent countless hours designing the site and announced its launch at a Project Censored event in Clearlake – particularly appropriate, given that John’s father, Carl Jensen, founded Project Censored.
Once it was launched, we never looked back.
Word of mouth and email were our advertising medium. Even so, the first year's growth was explosive and we had to upgrade our server several times before we finally had an infrastructure capable of supporting the load.
Our vision was clearly satisfying an appetite in the county.
When the Walker Ridge fire broke out in 2008 we covered it so thoroughly that the Board of Supervisors at that time presented us with a proclamation of appreciation for community service. We knew we were on the right track.
Since we’ve been publishing, we’ve broken some big stories and had as many as 14,000 people visit the site on a single day.
Toward the end of the second year other business owners repeatedly asked us if we would take their ads. It was then we began the process of turning what our district supervisor termed an “expensive hobby” into a business. Business owners had been asking us if we were ready to take ads and we set up the site to do that.
During our exploration of the Internet media landscape we became acquainted with other independent publishers and met with some of them in Sacramento to provide testimony for the state Senate regarding media technology issues.
Those connections led earlier this year to an Internet publishing colleague recommending us for a University of Southern California Annenberg School of Journalism fellowship, for which we produced a multi-part series on road hazards in the county in late October.
Lake County News continues to grow. We just passed four million pageviews for 2011, and we've had nearly 12 million pageviews since our launch, with readers checking in from around the world.
So where are we going?
Our plans are to expand the site with new features and sections as well as create more local partnerships. We have several new projects on the drawing table and we'll be letting you know as we roll them out.
Lake County News is a success, one that belongs to the community, and for that we offer you our heartfelt thanks.
We’re grateful to our supportive and generous readers, subscribers and advertisers; the tremendously talented correspondents and photographers who help us cover the county; and our independent Internet publishing colleagues across the United States, whose advice and friendship we value beyond measure.
We don’t want to forget to thank our close friends and families, who have understood our commitment to Lake County News and have accepted the accompanying sacrifices. In particular, we thank our parents, who raised us to believe that with honest, hard work, you can turns dreams into reality.
Happy fifth anniversary!
John Jensen and Elizabeth Larson are the founders and owners of Lake County News.
Follow Lake County News on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LakeCoNews, on Tumblr at www.lakeconews.tumblr.com, on Google+, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/pages/Lake-County-News/143156775604?ref=mf and on YouTube at www.youtube.com/user/LakeCoNews .
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