Cristina Shaul is DavidsonNews.net’s publisher, overseeing strategy, marketing, and other business operations.

By CRISTINA SHAUL
DavidsonNews.net

We’ve had another busy year at DavidsonNews.net, and as we celebrate our third anniversary this month, we are pleased to be able to continue providing news and information for Davidson and the surrounding area.

It has been a year of big changes on your local news site, most recently with a major re-design to accommodate expanded coverage of our area and to make your favorite topics easier to find.

We’ve added new sections: Real Estate (www.davidsonnews.net/realestate/), with news about home sales and local development; Pets (www.davidsonnews.net/pets/) edited by Michelle Marckwardt, with animal news, pet adoption information, and coverage of Cornelius Animal Shelter; a new-and-improved Guide section (www.davidsonnews.net/guide), that lists upcoming events in and around Davidson; and Sports (www.davidsonnews.net/sports), bringing you news on Davidson College teams and other local sporting events and regular updates on former Wildcat Stephen Curry, now in the NBA.

Cristina Shaul

We offered extensive coverage of this fall’s Town Board and school board elections, including a comprehensive Voters Guide with candidate information to help inform your voting decisions. We continued to cover breaking news as well, from the October fire that destroyed a home in River Run to this month’s armed robbery at a downtown ATM.

As publisher, I’m impressed with the quality and creativity of editor David Boraks’ work – editorially, photographically, and in the site’s unique audio interviews — does this man ever sleep? Laurie Dennis’s coverage of local schools has been top-notch – and what a lot we had, from welcoming a new Davidson Elementary principal to the hiring of the new high school principal to the controversy over the naming of Hough High. Brenda Barger does a fabulous job letting us know what is going on with folks in town in her well-read column, “Around Davidson.” We pull it all together with tireless behind-the-scenes work from folks like website manager/designer Lyndsay Kibiloski and advertising rep Dianne Campbell. Look for more excellent editorial content in 2010, including through a partnership we recently formed with The Charlotte Observer to share news content (more about that coming soon).

For our advertisers, we now offer more space for ads throughout the site. We recently learned, through a town-sponsored study on the local retail market, that Davidson residents and folks from the surrounding area perceive Davidson as a uniquely niche market. Davidson businesses also face strong competition, so they must either begin to — or continue to — promote themselves to compete with the “big box” stores in the area. DavidsonNews.net is an effective and economical way to directly target the Davidson market, 24/7.

We’re often asked how we pay for this. In truth, this remains a work in progress. We bring in revenue through a combination of advertising and voluntary reader payments. Many thanks to our voluntary paying subscribers — we could not survive without you. Your monthly support has helped us pay for our monthly internet bills, site maintenance, the cost of covering breaking news and Town Hall meetings, and to bring you more in depth news and features.

This is a very interesting time in our industry, and you may not realize it, but as a DavidsonNews.net reader, you’re part of a pioneering experiment in local news, or what’s often called “hyperlocal journalism.” In a time when print newspapers are finding their old business model waning, we are trying to help develop the next-generation business model for local news – on the Internet. We will continue to need your help — and from many more of you. Please consider making monthly contributions, or one large contribution, to cover the benefits you get from reading our site all year long. What’s our information worth to you? $1 a day? $10 per month? If each one of our readers contributed, we’d be able to cover our internet expenses and the cost to bring you our high-quality editorial content. We want to be able to maintain this service to our community for many years to come. (See www.davidsonnews.net/support for details on how to help.)

We look forward to keeping you informed, helping you plan your days with our extensive calendar and events listings on The Guide, offering you space to sell your services and wares in our Classifieds section, and giving you the ability to comment and dialogue on our stories in our commentary sections. Davidson is a special place, and we are happy to be part of your community.

I wish you all a happy, healthy and prosperous 2010.