OK, let's try to do this without complaining.
We're scrapping this site. We're scrapping our app. I went over that in detail in this space last week. We'll be building an all-new site and all-new app in the very near future, and the objective is nothing less than a world-class experience for our readers. That means it'll be completely customized toward what you've shown us, through both words and actions, that you want.
But, just to be double-sure, let's seek out some more words on that front and hear from you further.
Below are three questions for you to answer, in particular about how you use us on mobile devices, since that's where roughly three-quarters of our readership occurs. And again -- please, please, please -- there's literally no benefit to turning this into a list of complaints about the current site or app since neither will exist soon. We're looking forward. And we're not upgrading or fixing anything but, rather, starting completely from scratch.
Here goes ...
1. What's your top priority, from a purely content-based standpoint, with any sports app? Articles? Multimedia? Live stuff? Scores? Schedules? This one's all about the content.
2. To what degree would you like to be able to personalize your app experience? Meaning choosing the type of news that makes it into your feed, whether by team, by favorite player, whatever?
3. What's your favorite team-based or league-based app currently in your device? And why? No media apps, please. We're not looking to base anything we do on any media app anywhere. We're about sports.
Beyond that, feel free to add any experience you've had on an app that you might think would apply here. Go nuts on this one. No idea is a bad one.
Thanks so much in advance for helping to shape this!
NO ONE CARES ABOUT PIRATES?
People get mad in life. And they get particularly mad about the Pirates. I get that.
But when some of those people suggest silly things such as we should stop covering them -- and believe it or not, we hear that all the time -- it crosses the line into not understanding at all what we do as a journalism outlet.
The quality of the team, the caliber of the team's performance has no bearing on coverage. Neither does any potential civic cause that might arise from it. We commit to covering the team, and we cover the team. Every game. Every practice. Everywhere.
To state this as bluntly as possible: The day we stop covering the Pirates is the day this site no longer exists. They're a 133-year-old civic institution that, believe it or not, will eventually outlast this current regime. And at the other end, they'll still be a civic institution. There's no covering Pittsburgh sports without covering our city's most venerable franchise.
That aside, the actual interest in the Pirates hardly ever changes, in good times or bad. People might not like to admit that, but it's true. In the past week alone, the Steelers accounted for 149,611 page views in the height of their camp and preseason, and the Pirates accounted for 132,927. Sure, as I'd like to think, a lot of that has to do with readers trusting us to tell it like it is regarding the Pirates. But even that is a strong sign of undying interest.
Put it another way: If you really didn't care about the Pirates, you wouldn't be reading it when I ripped them.
We'll cover the Pirates. We'll cover them with every bit the commitment that we do our other two teams. And that doesn't have a damned thing to do with the miscreants running them into the ground. It's got everything to do with running this business right.
Hopping off the soapbox now.
FROM THE EDITOR IN CHIEF
I've had some readers wonder this week why we've had so many stories about Antonio Brown. After all, he's no longer with the Steelers.
But the fact of the matter is, many of you are still reading about the mercurial receiver's comings and goings with the Raiders. It's fun, after all, to watch the Raiders now suffering through some of the same issues with Brown the Steelers have had to deal with the past few years. So we've continued to cover it -- thankfully -- from afar. And many of you are still reading and commenting on those stories, so much so that a couple of days this week, the top stories on the site in terms of viewership were on Brown's latest antics.
Total page views for the week on AB content: 87,431.
The equivalent of a full normal day for us.
We've also, however, continued to cover the Steelers on a daily basis. They're just a little more boring right now. And isn't boring what everyone wanted? -- Dale Lolley
JASON'S FIGHT
The latest from our Jason Rollison:
Just an update on me pic.twitter.com/hI4kAwGr8F
— Jason Rollison (@jrollisonpgh) August 20, 2019
Jason's staying in touch with all of us in our group text and is still as involved as ever in both our baseball dialogue and coverage, as you've seen from the Mound Visit entries he filed this week.
He's fighting this. He'll win. -- DK
To continue reading, log into your account:
