TMC NEWS: FIRST 100 DAYS

100 Days, 20,000 hits

Today marks the 100th day of TMC NEWS being online. I wanted to take this chance to thank all of the people who check this site every day, even those of you who just check in from time to time, it’s appreciated. One of the questions I get the most is, what is this TMC NEWS thing all about? Well, I’ll tell you. Most of you remember the idiot who robbed the bank in Lorain years ago then led the police on a chase throughout the county. The chase happened to end up across from my Studio in downtown Elyria when Cheney, who couldn’t make the turn onto Broad from Middle, drove into a parked car, pushing a woman into a store front window. Being the seasoned news veteran that I was at the time, I was able to capture it all on video. That video was seen on every local station as well as across the world on CNN & FOX NEWS. The video is still shown today on many video clip shows. Shortly after that crash I signed a contract with NewsChannel 5 to provide them with stories in the Lorain County area. That relationship lasted several years up until the news director, Jim LeMay, was promoted and shipped out of town. The new administration was not a fan of outside bureaus so our contract was not renewed. There I was, left out on the street. Well, not really on the street, but not chasing news anymore.

Since then I have missed shooting news. In July I happened to be close to a house fire call in Sheffield Township so I stopped by and snapped a few pictures. I was first going to post them on my personal blog, but then I decided to create a news blog for it. A couple days later I posted the news of my friend’s child being born. I emailed the link to some friends to force them to look at the pics and read the stories and well, the rest they say is history.

Since then the site has grown to be much bigger then I had imagined it would be. There have been 155 stories posted, not all have been huge news stories. I did cover that tree down on Glenwood and Columbus St. and I still hear about that one from a certain TMC NEWS fan. TMC NEWS is just online to allow people another source of newsgathering. I still read the Chronicle Telegram everyday, I still watch NewsChannel 5 every night. I catch hell for this but I even read the Austin Statesman everyday as well. TMC NEWS cannot be at every breaking news stories; I try, but can’t get to them all. The hope is, that the stories that are presented on TMC NEWS are presented fairly and in a unique way .

The Future of TMC NEWS
Not much will change on TMC NEWS. People seem to like the layout of the site so that will not change much. We expect to be making an announcement before the end of the year, some very exciting news. Since my first love in shooting video and since we have been developing relationships with some Cleveland TV stations TMC NEWS will be adding video cameras to our equipment list. You will still see still pictures and plenty of them along with the stories we bring you. The addition of the video is just to make TMC NEWS a stronger news source in our area. One other change that you will see in the near future will of course be an ad banner. I PROMISE you all that there will never be pop-ups and for those of you that are on our email list your emails will never be shared with anyone. One of the compliments that I get on the site is how clean and simple it is, that will not change either. I like the clean look and I love simple.

Chatter Boxes
The comments section has been a favorite of a lot of people. Some like to leave comments, most like to just read them. Since July we have seen many that are funny (Jason & Haasenfoose), some that are infuriating, others have been enlightening and there have been a few that tug at the heartstrings. In the future I hope to have a site where you have to post your name and city in order to post a comment. The ability to comment anonymously has brought out the nasty side of some people. I am not trying to censor anyone; if you want to voice your opinion that many other people may disagree with I have no problem with that as long as you post your name as well.

Who are you people?
As I said with the comments section, we hear from a lot of you through that section. I also receive emails from people asking questions or just commenting on the site. I recently received an unexpected email from WKYC anchorman Tim White complimenting the site and offering words of encouragement. The email was very kind and greatly appreciated. When we had the “email drive” back a couple months ago I learned that we have readers from not only outside of the Lorain County area, but outside the state. TMC NEWS has readers in Texas, Tennessee, Florida, North Carolina and California. We did not reach the goal of adding 1,000 emails to the list but we did add more then I thought we would. I suppose this is where I ask you; did you all send out mass emails to family and friends telling them to get signed up for the TMC NEWS EMAIL ALERTS? No, well get off your butts and get it done. If Mike Polutnik can do it anyone can. For those of you that we have not heard from feel free to drop us a line. You can email at tmcnews1@aol.com or leave a comment here attached to this posting.
I look forward to hearing where everybody is located; lets add some news states to the list. There must be some Elyria folks in Las Vegas. There is one other person who is a supporter of TMC NEWS that I want to thank. I call her my “copy editor”. She will email me after reading the posts and tell me what words I misspelled. I have told her that when I open my mailbox and see an email from her I start getting nervous wondering what word I messed up.

Well, that’s it now you can get back to work. Thanks again for reading and I hope you keep checking back to see what we have found, “In Our Community”.