A familiar face on the North Olympic Peninsula, first seen in the spring of 1916, turned 95 today.
The face belongs to the Peninsula Daily News, and it reflects the changing times — the area’s growth, the successes, the disappointments, laughter and tears of the people who call Jefferson and Clallam counties home.
In addition to being on newsprint, the PDN now has an “e-Edition” — you can read, page by page, an exact digital replica of the printed paper on your computer, iPad or smartphone — and it operates the most popular website on the Peninsula.
In March, www.peninsuladailynews.com scored more than 1 million monthly page views, a new record.
The newspaper was first published April 10, 1916.
It was called the Port Angeles Evening News when started by A.A. Smith and E.B. Webster, newspapermen whose blood may have been mixed with printer’s ink.
The name was changed to The Daily News in 1972 and to Peninsula Daily News in 1987 to reflect its switch from afternoon to morning publication and its 156-mile circulation area from Hood Canal to LaPush.
The Daily News cost 5 cents a week when it was begun by Webster and Smith in 1916.
The first front page included accounts of fighting between the French and Germans at Verdun, France, in World War I, the pursuit of Mexican bandit and revolutionary Pancho Villa by American cavalrymen in West Texas — and an effort by Port Angeles Mayor E.J. Walton to recruit students to participate in the city’s Clean Up Week.
“The Peninsula community is still as scrappy and as feisty as it was in 1916,” said John Brewer, the newspaper’s sixth publisher and editor.
“I think we reflect that in the newspaper, too, and online.
“We enjoy publishing this area’s endless news — and the endless variety of opinions about that news!
“As everyone here knows, we’re a local, local, local newspaper, and what many may not know is that we actually publish two newspapers Sunday through Friday — we’ve been doing this since June of 1998 — one edition for our readers in Port Angeles, Sequim and the West End, the other for readers in Port Townsend and the rest of East Jefferson County.”
The PDN does more than carry news and advertising.
“We contribute to more than 25 community organizations across both counties,” said Brewer.
“And we raised just short of $250,000 last year for our Peninsula Home Fund, which gives ‘a hand up, not a handout’ to individuals, families, single moms, seniors across the Peninsula without deducting one penny for administration or overhead.”
The PDN recorded 1,008,636 page views at its website in March, with an average audience of 239,776 unique visitors.
This is a record — the previous high was 868,986 page views and 165,467 unique visitors last October.
There was also a record number of total visitors — 385,537.
The top news stories viewed at www.peninsuladailynews.com in March had to do with the impact on the Peninsula — from waves to radiation to local aid efforts — as a result of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
But also drawing thousands of readers from across the globe was the PDN’s story about another tragic event, this one local.
A man apparently trying to save his wife via CPR collapsed himself, fell on top of her and died in the couple’s home in Joyce.
Rescuers broke into the home — the man had called 9-1-1, saying his wife wasn’t breathing and that he was starting CPR — and tried to revive both the man, 60, and his wife, 59, but both died, apparently from heart attacks.
The man was found slumped over his wife.
The PDN’s website is far and away the dominant news and information website for the North Olympic Peninsula, according to statistics from Omniture, Quantcast and Google Analytics, all of which measure Web traffic.
The number of page views demonstrates the volume of traffic a website receives.
A “visit” is when one person is active on a website.
“Unique visitors,” in Web jargon, come back again and again for fresh information. Their Internet address is counted only once no matter how many times they visit the site.
The print PDN is also strong, with an audited Monday through Friday circulation of 14,202 as of last week.
This translates to 34,000 daily readers, more than one-third of the Peninsula’s total population.
Sunday audited circulation was 15,587, with a Peninsula-wide readership of more than 46,000.
But both circulation numbers were down last week, reflecting several hundred temporary stops because of spring-break vacations.
In addition to using independent agencies to measure its Web traffic, the PDN is the only newspaper on the Peninsula with its print edition circulation verified by an independent auditor, the national Audit Bureau of Circulations.
