That under-construction swath of urban land up there once was the A.J. Palumbo Center on the Duquesne campus. Later this year, it'll be the UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse, the new $45 million home of the Dukes. And the timing appears perfect, given that Keith Dambrot's got the program looking more promising than at any point in the past 40 years.
I went to school on the Bluff, for those who don't know. In fact, the old journalism school can almost be seen in that photo I snapped, just off to the left.
So yeah, it'd be wonderful to get back to covering Duquesne hoops.
But again, as with our recent decision to resume coverage of Pitt basketball and football, we'd need to know -- with certainty -- that the readers want it and will support it, participate in it, share it, whatever it takes to make it all it can be. Because, as is the case with everything we cover regularly, we won't do anything halfway. We're either in, or we're out. So the same has to apply to that portion of the readership that'd be interested.
Let's hear from you below. Specifically, let's hear -- verbally, only -- if you'd be interested in helping us achieve a goal of selling a certain number of Duquesne-based subscriptions, costing $19.55 each to commemorate the Dukes' 1955 national championship. If you are, simply leave a comment and nothing more. Repeat: Zero commitment.
Since we'd never start covering anything at mid-season, there's plenty of time to get serious about this. We're just trying to gauge now how many individual existing subscribers would want this and support it. So we're taking your word for it.
I'll be down there talking about it all with you.
NEW FEATURES COMING
We're close to unveiling two new weekly features, one of them the return of an old favorite, the other being Dave Molinari's idea.
I'll hold off on the former, but the latter will be a Point-Counterpoint back-and-forth in which two staffers -- or contributors -- will face off on a subject where we legitimately don't see eye-to-eye. There's more of this sort of thing that occurs than one might think, and all too often we think it's a shame that such dialogue never makes it to our readers. Now, it will.
JANUARY ... JUST SHORT
I'd mentioned a week ago that we were on pace to have our best January in the site's history, purely from the subscription revenue standpoint. I even typed, 'I'll let you know next week if we hit it. We really should.'
Yeah, kiss of death right there. Me and my big mouth.
We just completed an awful week from that standpoint -- I mean, one of the worst we've ever had -- so we wound up $100 under our previous high for the month, back in January 2017. Still, since January 2017 had the unfair advantage of the Penguins vying for a second straight Stanley Cup, it remains a positive that we could even come close. Another sign of the continuing strength and growth of the business.
NEW APP UPDATE
Had a great face-to-face meeting with our developers about the new app, and the most uplifting part was that production will swing into overdrive next week. All of the design work, all of the framework, all of the funding are complete. Now, it's just a matter of creating the thing.
Another thing to share:
The very top left of the screen -- where the search icon is seen in the illustration above -- will actually be a profile icon. That'll allow you to check your account, your preferences, your choice of alerts and, because your avatar will show up, you'll see that you're STAYING LOGGED IN. Which will be the case.
This was a late addition to our planning, but we were super-excited about it upon finally thinking of it.
I can't wait for this. All of it.
BACK TO BUSINESS
• New paid subscribers for 2020 -- not including gifts, military, returning/renewing subscribers -- are at 31.
• Our daily page views, averaged out over the past 30 days, are at 68,038. I've been citing here for months now that the goal with this figure is to average 100,000, a number we've achieved regularly only during the two Stanley Cup runs. We had our lowest month since the summer.
• Our most-hit original article of the past week was my Grind on the Starling Marte trade at 21,038. The Pirates accounted for 121,399 page views, the Steelers 90,239, the Penguins 84,832, and Pitt basketball 12,149.
• We're at 35,535 (+79) followers on Twitter, we're at 32,043 (+10) page likes on Facebook, we're at 13,173 (+104) followers on Instagram. These figures are just for our official company account on each platform, not for us as individuals.
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