SUNRISE, Fla. -- This time, it'll be all the way to 1,000.
No, it'll be 1,500, actually!
Josh DeNinno, our great friend at Moon Golf Club, issued a challenge to our subscribers to step up with 1,000 veteran subscription purchases in 2019. And to everyone's credit, we did wind up with 642 despite the challenge having been issued in April.
This year, we'll virtually guarantee the 1,500 figure, in recognition of Moon Golf Club's 15th anniversary, in two ways:
1. We'll reduce the cost of these to half-price, now $19.99 for an annual, as we've done with other gift subscriptions.
2. Moon Golf Club will match 30 of these each month.
That comes right from Josh, and trust me, it comes from the heart. He wrote to me a couple weeks ago sounding more determined than ever to achieve the goal.
"We fell short last year, but also didn’t launch until April," he said. "As you know, this is so important to me. Originally inspired by the dedicated healthcare my wife provides every day to veterans. Veteran and military family stories move us deeply. There isn’t much we can do to truly show our gratitude, but we also know every little bit counts. To put our money where our mouth is. To help folks feel more connected to home. Whether it’s the hometown teams they read about or a few dollars off each time they visit our facility. Unbelievably, their own gratitude for such small gestures is humbling. Only makes you want to do more."
Of Moon Golf Club, he added, "We’re a municipal course. Community is our lifeblood. We count on vets as some of our volunteers and employees. We buy products from veteran-owned/operated companies, and we make sure we accommodate related groups that want to use our facility."
Let's do this. Here's where.
Or, if you’re interested in making a bulk donation, please email me directly: DK@DKPittsburghSports.com
THAT TROY ARTICLE
For those who don't know, Dale Lolley's exclusive interview with Troy Polamalu last weekend in Miami obliterated all of our records for readership with 364,145 page views ... and still counting. Nothing else in our site's history had even a third as many.
We learned a lot of lessons from this, not least of which was the latest reminder that our current app/site can't accommodate traffic at that scale. (The developers of our new app were engaged and learned directly.) The other is that there are so, so, so many Steelers fans out there we still need to reach. We haven't scratched the surface yet. We really haven't.
NEW FEATURES COMING
We're close to unveiling two new weekly features, one of them the return of an old favorite, the other being Dave Molinari's idea.
The former will be the return of the Midweek Reader, albeit with a new name to reflect the day it'll run: Tuesday Takeout. Our staff will take turns expounding with full-length features on topics of timely interest. Some will be long-form, others will be just ... different. The goal is to take you deeper inside the subjects we cover, as well as some we don't cover on a regular basis.
The latter, as mentioned here last week, will be a Point-Counterpoint back-and-forth in which two staffers -- or contributors -- face off on a subject where we legitimately don't see eye-to-eye. There's more of this sort of thing that occurs than one might think, and all too often we think it's a shame that such dialogue never makes it to our readers. Now, it will.
First week of March is the target for these.
NEW APP UPDATE
All of the design work, all of the framework, all of the funding are complete. Now, it's just a matter of creating the thing, a process that'll begin in earnest Monday and, if all goes well, we'll have a beta version for testing by month's end.
Another thing to share:
We'll be offering direct links to a broad array of teams, schools and other entities that we don't cover, thus offering you a single portal to everything you'd want to see all from the very same app. And in a couple cases, we're looking into enhancing those relationships to ensure you get something special by going through us.
Plain and simple, if it's a team or school that interests you, this can be your portal. One-stop shop.
I can't wait for this. All of it.
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