Times of San Diego marked its first anniversary on Friday, with nearly 2.1 million online readers reached during the first full year of operation.
The website debuted on March 13, 2014, and was read by 858 people on its first day of publication. Now the site is routinely read by 7,000 to 10,000 people daily and nearly 200,000 over the course of a month.
The site primarily appeals to a younger audience, with readers aged 25 to 34 the largest single group. This is in contrast to newspapers and TV, which reach audiences averaging over 55 years of age.
During the first year, the Times’ single most popular story was an exclusive report in February that Fox 5 had mistakenly used a photo of President Obama with a story about a rape suspect. A guide to July 4th fireworks was second, and many crime and election stories were also very popular, as was an early story about the Ebola drug ZMapp and coverage of the wildfires last May.
The Times’ staff of seven contributing editors and photographers — Chris Jennewein, Alex Nguyen, Ken Stone, Debbie Sklar, Chris Stone, Ryan Poster and Aleksandra Konstantinovic — publish an average of 20 articles a day with a goal for providing essential coverage of the San Diego metropolitan area.
The site is popular with mobile readers since it is designed to automatically re-format for different sized screens. In fact, 48 percent of the audience reads the site on smartphones and tablets.
Beginning this month, editors are frequently working out of the Co-Merge work space in downtown San Diego. Let us know if you’d like to meet us there.
