Orleans Hub hits 4-year milestone

ALBION – Orleans Hub is four years old today. We’ve published about 20,000 articles, never missing a day with at least one new article posted daily since we started.

We generally post at least 10 articles on each weekday (including sports), and about 5 each day on the weekends.

We operate under the Lake Country Pennysaver. The Pennysaver’s owner and publisher, Karen Sawicz, also serves in those roles for the Orleans Hub. The Pennysaver ad representatives, Gary Hill and Brad London, also handle ad sales for the Hub. The Pennysaver graphics artists design the ads, and the office staff also work with the Hub accounts. It’s worked out nicely.

Tom Rivers is the full-time editor for the Hub, Mike Wertman covers the sports and his wife Cheryl Wertman takes the pictures at the games, capturing local athletes dunking the basketball, hitting home runs, pushing themselves in a sprinting event or other key moments during games.

Kristina Gabalski also has been a key asset covering eastern Orleans County, the 4-H program and other community stories.

We want to thank our advertisers, especially those who have stayed with us since the very beginning. The advertisers allow for free access of the Orleans Hub. Many other news sites require paid subscriptions to access their articles, or make readers fill out surveys about products. We have no plans of doing that.

This is a tough time in the news business. Since the Orleans Hub started, The Albion Advertiser, The Journal-Register in Medina and Tonawanda News have all closed.

We are grateful the Orleans Hub has been a success. It takes a lot of effort from many people to keep it going.

We thank the Orleans Hub readers, who average more than 7,000 each day, for checking the site, sometimes several times daily. They give us lots of good feedback and constructive criticism. They value the site and we appreciate how much they care.

One of our goals in starting the Orleans Hub was to cover the many positives in the community. We felt “bad news” tended to dominate the coverage about Orleans County. The Rochester and Buffalo media often wouldn’t cover Orleans County unless it was a crime, tragedy or something weird.

Orleans Hub covers those stories, too. But we try to show a lot of good things going on, and not just fixate on the negative.