Wow, what a month. First of all, I would like to say a sincere thank you to all of you who have continued to check the site, continued to provide support, continued to keep your hopes up, and (most importantly) continued to keep your enthusiasm about our GREAT city at amazing levels. You are the reason this site became exponentially more than it was ever intended to be. You are the reason I love living here.
Needless to say, losing Dana was like losing all of Raleighing’s appendages. Sure, the site was my idea. Yeah, the name, design, format, branding, etc, etc, etc were all mine… but everyone knows that Dana provided nearly all of the meat of the site. Hell, I’ve repeatedly admitted his insights and spirit were the motivation behind all my work to make the site a reality.
We apparently had a good thing going. I recall sending out emails to our friends when we hit the 100 readers-a-day mark and again when we hit 200… ’cause Dana and I surely didn’t have that many immediate friends. When we hit 3000 a day at our peak (which amazingly we continue to hit… even without new posts), I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. Surely, I was proud as hell… but, to be honest, I was feeling the burden of keeping a site like this going. I will never speak for Dana, but from our conversations I can say he felt some of the same pressures…
As Dana explained in his post, his departure did have a little to do with our difference of opinion on the nature of this site. But mostly, we both have just hit various crossroads in our respective lives that have dictated that we retreat a bit from our "volunteer" work on this site. I adore my life, I now adore my day job, and I still adore this city. Unfortunately, a site like Raleighing is very hard to maintain when everything else is more important and more fulfilling, you know?
Anyway, much to the chagrin of the many ingrates who posted rude, hateful comments on the site, I have taken the past few weeks to reflect on the site and it’s purpose in order to determine its next steps. Some of you who check the actual site (rather than just the daily emails) have noticed that a couple of days ago I posted an announcement on the site that I am now accepting applications for writers. Yes, I have decided to try to keep this good thing going, but have determined that I just don’t have the time to do it alone. So, I am hoping I find others who have the same kind of passion I do for this wonderful city.
No, I do not want writers who would do well at the N&O. I do not intend on replacing them. I need folks who want to incite the kinds of conversations that are not influenced by anything but the passion for this city to become one of the great personalities of our beautiful country.
Speaking of the N&O (and let’s just go ahead and throw in the TBJ since they have thrown themselves into this situation as well), I will inform all of you–especially those who are considering applying for a contributor position here–that it has come to my attention that both publications supposedly consider Raleighing to now be a threat to their business. Several of my best sources have pleaded with me to refrain from posting insider information as those publications have apparently stated that they will not feature content that has first been made public on Raleighing.com. I, of course, have not been able to 100% substantiate this information, but the fact that more than a few of my sources have independently approached me with the same request is quite curious.
I absolutely will not claim that our local news providers are taking such aggressive moves towards newsworthy items for our area. This would certainly not be what I personally would consider to be fair practices. I mean, come on, Raleighing has never been about making money from this information. We’re just trying to keep all of you, my beloved neighbors, informed. We’re just trying to do our (ok, my… for now) part in making this perfect city the kind of place we all know it is and can be.
Ok, I’ll get down off my soapbox now. Deeeeeeeeeep breaths…
I have just today sent out approximately 15 invites to potential authors for Raleighing. They have each been provided accounts on the site which will permit them to write articles. For now, I will remain Editor-In-Chief of the site which means each article will not go live until I’ve had a chance to review it. I’ll not only be doing the spelling and grammatical check, but also will do my best to verify the information reported. But, as always, we’ll continue to respect the power of our community to assist with the validation of assumptions.
Thank you for continuing your ridiculously amazing support of Raleighing and Raleigh. Those of you who are true Raleighers, go to the site and submit an application to write for us. I’d love to find a whole slew of the best Raleighers around! Let’s keep our vision alive!
Finally, thanks for your patience. You all rock my world.
Chris
