New Canaan history, real estate and land use, business and youth sports—these are the four topics that dominate the top-10 most popular articles published on NewCanaanite.com since we launched.
NCHS standout softball pitcher Ali Reilly is Babson-bound.
Today marks three months for our local news site covering New Canaan (we launched Friday, Jan. 31). In that time, we’ve seen strong, sustained growth in traffic and social media followings, and garnered some interesting facts from Google Analytics about who reads the site:
- 61 percent of NewCanaanite.com readers are 18 to 34 years old;
- 55 percent of our readers are male;
- about half of our readers come to NewCanaanite.com through mobile devices—and among those mobile users, about two-thirds are on smartphones, the other third on tablets such as iPads;
- we see a 50-50 split between new and returning readers;
- NewCanaanite.com has seen sustained traffic of more than 10,000 users per month (10,716 in the month of April, Google Analytics says) and 33,000-plus page views monthly;
- Facebook fans have grown on a week-over-week average rate of 10 percent for NewCanaanite.com—the highest 10 times over among local outlets that serve our town.
Here’s a list of our top-10 most-read single articles since launching:
- New Canaan Man Part of Historic $120 Million Greenwich Estate Sale
- ‘The Great Wall of New Canaan’: Perambulation Line
- Looking Back: Forest Street Deli to Close Next Friday
- Dantown: The ‘Atlantis of New Canaan’
- In Search of New Canaan History: Stephen Weed’s Fort
- Wave Goodbye: New Canaan Stuns Darien To Win FCIAC Hockey Title
- The Life of Reilly: New Canaan’s Star Pitcher Chooses Babson
- South Avenue Landmark: Brooks Sanatorium, Reincarnated
- Heroin and New Canaan, Part 1 of 3: Tracing and Defining a Problem
- New Canaan Preservationists Lament Demolition of Historic Jelliff Mill, Home
In the case of the number one story, NewCanaanite.com—with a great assist from Leslie Yager, editor at sister publication Greenwich Free Press—was first to report the name of the group (led by a New Canaanite) behind a historic $120 million residential property acquisition in Greenwich.
New Canaanites have been greeted by Bob Watters at Forest Street Deli for more than 20 years, and for more than half of that time they've also seen Jessica Bonestell at the downtown fixture. Friday April 18 was its last day.
The numbers 2, 4, 5 and 8 most-read articles are all local history snapshots from our “0684-Old” feature, while an article about our high school’s champion hockey team and a profile on a star Rams’ varsity softball pitcher also made the list.
Rounding out the top-10 are the first installment in a 3-part series on heroin and New Canaan—the single article among our most-read involving police and public safety—and a look through the lens of preservation architects and the New Canaan Preservation Alliance at the demolition of historic structures at Jelliff Mill.
New Canaan High School Rams 2014 FCIAC hockey champions over Darien.
Click here for more information about Michael and Terry Dinan, the editors behind NewCanaanite.com, and here’s more information about our site—approach, editorial coverage plan and background. A member of the New Canaan Chamber of Commerce, Society of Professional Journalists and Online News Association, NewCanaanite.com has been interviewed and cited by multiple media journals since launching, and you can find some of those articles here.
A sincere ‘Thank You’ on this milestone to our readers and advertising partners, whom you can see in the right-rail of this article page as well as our homepage.