May 1st, 2008
We track what people are looking at on our Web sites each day. It’s pretty easy, usually, to know what stories will drive traffic. Crime and accidents usually take top billing. And local TV personalities. Take the story today on former TV anchor Mimi Murphy. Murphy, who anchored WIFR-23 news for several years, filed a lawsuit against the station’s parent company. Hands down, the Murphy story is the No. 1 story on rrstar.com today. Next closest is this one, more than 1,000 page views behind.
Two recent stories on former local TV people were top traffic generators, too. We had this story on Heather Pick, former WREX-13 anchor. Pick is now in Columbus, Ohio. And this one on Randy Salerno, who died in a snowmobile accident. Salerno got his start at WIFR and eventually ended up in Chicago.
RRSTAR.COM FILE PHOTO
Mimi Murphy at the WIFR-23 studio in this 1998 photo.
May 1st, 2008
We published a new “Remember When” gallery today on rrstar.com. This time, check out pictures, newspaper pages and articles from President Lyndon B. Johnson’s visit to the Rock River Valley in October 1974.
We’ve gotten a lot of positive response from readers since launching these galleries. Next up is Richard Nixon’s visit here.
RRSTAR.COM FILE PHOTO
Then-president Lyndon B. Johnson tried to excite a crowd of 35,000 area residents but only drew “polite applause.” Johnson’s visit drew more people than Kennedy or Nixon’s, but the Johnson crowd “lacked the zeal and enthusiasm of Nixon and Kennedy partisans,” wrote a Rockford Morning Star reporter in 1964.
May 1st, 2008
I get Google alerts any time we’re mentioned on the World Wide Web. Authors Deb Halpern Wenger and Deborah Potter blogged about our Web-first video. The pair wrote “Advancing the Story: Broadcast Journalism in a Multimedia World. You can watch the video there, too. And if you have time, read what Jennie Pollock wrote about the video.
