Quietly last fall, NEastPhilly.com, the hyperlocal news site for Northeast Philadelphia, marked three years since having been launched as a college project by now WHYY NewsWorks feed blogger Shannon McDonald.
Though I spent much of that time contributing coverage, I now play the role of web editor, helping keep the site up and functional. Shannon has had more than 20 contributors, a handful of them to date, and has done serious journalism and meaningful community coverage, on her own and with outreach from residents and readers.
Though an after-hours labor of love of hers, I’ve remained impressed with the relative impact of NEast Philly, so, three years later, I wanted to share some metrics.
- As seen above, NEast averages better than 1300 hits every weekday, an impressive sum for a niche site of any kind (particularly one for a print-heavy community and without full-time staff) and often spiking far more than that for breaking news and big community coverage.
- The NEast Philly Facebook page, with more than 13,500 likes, is among the largest and most active social communities in Philadelphia, as seen below.
- More than 70 percent Referral traffic to NEastPhilly.com come from Google, Facebook and direct traffic, as seen at top.
