Talk of the Sound Scores with "Girl, Interrupted" Censorship Story
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Robert Cox
Dec 11, 2008, 10:34:53 AM12/11/08
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Dear NRTOTS Google Group Member,
Hopefully you saw already that on Monday we broke news on Talk of the Sound:
Now Playing in New Rochelle, "Book, Interrupted"!
http://www.newrochelletalk.com/node/288
The story was picked up on the Internet by some of the biggest blogs in the world - Boing Boing, Hot Air, Crooks and Liars, Gothamist and many others including National Coalition Against Censorship, Joanne Jacobs (top education blogger), New Yorker magazine blog, Librarian and Information Science News and many others. The story went out to over 1,000,000 readers on these sites.
Our site got a mention in The Journal News,, on many blogs, and had over 3,000 visitors in 72 hours. The Associated Press picked up the story and we got ink on web sites for WINS, The New York Post, Newsday and many others.
The effect of our story was to force the School District to take the highly unusual step of issuing two public statements about the controversy and announce they will replace all 50 copies of Girl, Interrupted that had pages torn out.
Facing Firestorm of Criticism, New Rochelle Schools Relent on "Girl, Interrupted" Censorship
http://www.newrochelletalk.com/node/290
When the site was launched in August I felt it would take about a year to achieve critical mass. With this story we are ahead of schedule in some ways. If you search for "New Rochelle" in Google you will see that today the Girl, Interrupted web page is #15 overall. That is pretty amazing considering there are 2.3 million entries for New Rochelle and we have only been at this for 3.5 months. If you search certain related keywords you will see we are even higher. We are the #1 result for Cindy Babcock Deutsch and very high for Organisciak, Conetta, Bongo, and others. We will certainly not retain the high level of traffic we have had this week but we will retain some of it. I would expect that whereas we were averaging about 50 readers a day we will now start to average more like 100 or 3,000 a month. The goal is by next August we will be at 2,000 readers a day or 60,000 so we have a long way to go.
I hope this validates what I've been telling some of you - that if we patiently add content to the site, keep reporting out stories from within the community, that we will have break out moments like this where we can raise awareness of the site and catalyze something entirely new in New Rochelle - genuine discussion of topics important to New Rochelle residents without the filter of the local media and/or local officials. This event marks the beginning of what will, over time, be the end of the stranglehold on the free flow of information in our city so the day will come when we get true transparency, accountability and open government.
You can help further that effort right now by forwarding this email to just one person (feel free to send it to more) encourage them to sign up for this group so they are getting occasional emails from us when we have a particularly news worthy story. You all have your own group of friends, families and neighbors in New Rochelle. Take a moment to forward this email to them and encourage them to become readers, sign up, start commenting or even add blog posts to the site.
Thanks for your help
Let's keep fighting the good fight!
Bob Cox
Now Playing in New Rochelle, "Book, Interrupted"!
http://www.newrochelletalk.com/node/288
The story was picked up on the Internet by some of the biggest blogs in the world - Boing Boing, Hot Air, Crooks and Liars, Gothamist and many others including National Coalition Against Censorship, Joanne Jacobs (top education blogger), New Yorker magazine blog, Librarian and Information Science News and many others. The story went out to over 1,000,000 readers on these sites.
Our site got a mention in The Journal News,, on many blogs, and had over 3,000 visitors in 72 hours. The Associated Press picked up the story and we got ink on web sites for WINS, The New York Post, Newsday and many others.
The effect of our story was to force the School District to take the highly unusual step of issuing two public statements about the controversy and announce they will replace all 50 copies of Girl, Interrupted that had pages torn out.
Facing Firestorm of Criticism, New Rochelle Schools Relent on "Girl, Interrupted" Censorship
http://www.newrochelletalk.com/node/290
When the site was launched in August I felt it would take about a year to achieve critical mass. With this story we are ahead of schedule in some ways. If you search for "New Rochelle" in Google you will see that today the Girl, Interrupted web page is #15 overall. That is pretty amazing considering there are 2.3 million entries for New Rochelle and we have only been at this for 3.5 months. If you search certain related keywords you will see we are even higher. We are the #1 result for Cindy Babcock Deutsch and very high for Organisciak, Conetta, Bongo, and others. We will certainly not retain the high level of traffic we have had this week but we will retain some of it. I would expect that whereas we were averaging about 50 readers a day we will now start to average more like 100 or 3,000 a month. The goal is by next August we will be at 2,000 readers a day or 60,000 so we have a long way to go.
I hope this validates what I've been telling some of you - that if we patiently add content to the site, keep reporting out stories from within the community, that we will have break out moments like this where we can raise awareness of the site and catalyze something entirely new in New Rochelle - genuine discussion of topics important to New Rochelle residents without the filter of the local media and/or local officials. This event marks the beginning of what will, over time, be the end of the stranglehold on the free flow of information in our city so the day will come when we get true transparency, accountability and open government.
You can help further that effort right now by forwarding this email to just one person (feel free to send it to more) encourage them to sign up for this group so they are getting occasional emails from us when we have a particularly news worthy story. You all have your own group of friends, families and neighbors in New Rochelle. Take a moment to forward this email to them and encourage them to become readers, sign up, start commenting or even add blog posts to the site.
Thanks for your help
Let's keep fighting the good fight!
Bob Cox
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