Tropical Storm Helene’s arrival in our area Friday morning was bound to have a devastating impact, and there’s no better way to illustrate how damaging the storm was than to see what those most affected by it have had to deal with.
When I issued a call-out to readers for photos of storm damage and flooding near them, I was honored that so many bothered to take the time to share what they saw.
One of them is Renae Popkin, a resident of Columns Drive, who sent the photos and video included in this post of the flooding in her yard, the road in front of her home and in the neighborhood.
This was where storm flooding from Helene was worst in East Cobb, and Columns Drive was closed until late Friday afternoon.
In addition to surging storm waters, downed trees and debris in the road made it impassable.
Popkin told us on Friday that there were staff from the Cobb Sheriff’s Office trying to cut the trees and remove pieces from Columns Drive.
When we checked back with her on Saturday, she sent a photo of a portion of the road that’s still blocked off.
“Luckily most of the water has receded!” she said.
(Click the middle button to view the slideshow.)
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While she and her neighbors still have cleaning up to do as they dry off from a very soggy few days, we in East Cobb are breathing a sigh of relief that the damage wasn’t worse.
Only a few thousand people in Cobb County lost power, and the wind gusts that promised to be at tropical-storm levels didn’t materialize as they could have.
We really dodged a catastrophe. When I woke up after daybreak Friday morning, I said a prayer and cried a little.
I won’t lie, I was deeply afraid of what might have happened here. I had my evacuation bag packed and ready to go. My cat slept through the whole thing, right near a window, so perhaps I should have taken that as a clue.
When I see photos and videos of what Helene wrought elsewhere in Georgia, and in the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee—where whole towns disappeared and doctors, nurses and patients had to be rescued from the top of hospital that had been flooded—tears come to my eyes.
Mostly, I feel a great sense of gratitude that our lives haven’t been ripped apart by the storm like so many others have.
Around 15 Georgians have died, including a first responder. Parts of the city of Valdosta have been leveled. Massive flooding in the metro Atlanta area persists. A million people were without power.
We have so much to be thankful for in East Cobb, and this local news publisher is especially grateful to readers for giving us an up-close glimpse of what even a fraction of a powerful storm can do.
One of the biggest changes in the news business in the digital age is the ease with which everyday people can be citizen-reporters, if you will, relaying their observations, photos and videos with the public.
The last thing I did as the editor of East Cobb Patch was cover the major ice storm of January 2014. Like everyone else, I was hunkered down and frozen in, but readers sent in their information and photos of what their neighborhood looked like, how long it took them to get home, etc.
That’s the Power of Local on display, as it was here again on Friday, in a time of a potential crisis that could have crippled this community.
I deeply appreciate Renae and all the others who shared with us a sense of what it was like out there.
I like to say that readers have helped make East Cobb News better—not just with their contributions but also with their feedback—good, bad or otherwise—to guide me as we continue here.
Thanks to all of you for your readership, and for investing your time with East Cobb News. Please get in touch at wendy@eastcobbnews.com with suggestions, comments, etc. I’d love to hear from you!
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Special events, from Avenue East Cobb’s new plaza garden party to church holiday concerts, are a staple of East Cobb News coverage.
Every couple years we like to survey our readership to find out how we can better serve all of you.
Two years ago, as the post-COVID era began, I thought it would be helpful to gauge our readers, and many of you provided very useful feedback.
East Cobb News continues to adapt coverage to make it relevant for you, as we expanded into some more featurized topics and issues, and as we undertake a new Power of Local campaign to drive home how local news, business and communtity-building go hand-in-hand.
While many of you come for the bread-and-butter issues of local government, schools, crime, public safety, development and transportation, others crave the latest restaurant and retail news, enjoy reading about festivals and accomplishments by people in our community, and how we’re offering a helping hand to neighbors in need.
Last year, East Cobb News had its best traffic year ever at nearly 1.7 million pageviews, without a pandemic or elections.
We’ve got election coverage still to come in the fall, but it’s very gratifying to know that East Cobb News readers come to our site, visit our social media channels and subscribe to our newsletter for all kinds of news—that’s what a general-interest news outlet strives to achieve.
So thanks to all of you for your visits! Now we’re asking you to tell us what you think of what you get from East Cobb News.
We love coming to ribbon-cuttings, ranging from the Barnes & Noble to the new Eastvalley ES campus!
All you have to do is click the link above, and respond to nine questions about this site, and the news and information we provide. The survey takes just a few minutes, and once you’re finished, hit the “submit” button.
What’s happening in East Cobb is why you come here, and we want to better serve your interests and understand what you value about this community resource.
Unlike corporate-owned media, East Cobb News answers above all to our readers, with the objective of meeting the news and information needs in our community. Your answers will help us tailor our product to make it really appeal to what’s important to you.
Don’t be bashful—tell us what we’re doing well, what we could do better or different or even not at all. We appreciate your readership and look forward to delivering more community news and information that’s relevant to you as we continue in 2024 and into the new year.
I’m always accessible to field your questions, hear complaints and try to explain why we do what we do at East Cobb News. E-mail me: wendy@eastcobbnews.com.
We’ll be collecting responses through September, so please feel free to complete the survey as you can. We’ll share the responses we head into the last quarter of the year.
Thanks so much for your readership of East Cobb News!
Tapping into a sense of community, from a veterans’ salute concert to a neighborhood cafe, is an East Cobb News hallmark.
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Monday marks a very special day at East Cobb News.
Yes, it’s just another Monday in the hot summer, and we’ll be at our Monday routine as well to start off another week.
But on July 8, 2017, coming a few days after our national holiday, is the day that I formally declared my independence as a journalist and pushed the “publish” button for East Cobb News for the first time.
If I had known then what I know now, would I have done it? I wonder about that on occasion, and I have been asked that question too, as it has been a daunting experience from time to time.
Getting anything off the ground is a real grind, and just as we thought we were flexing our wings, the COVID-19 pandemic was declared, which changed so much about our lives, and the work we do here.
But as I set to turn the calendar to Year Eight of this local business of mine—how time flies!—I can say unequivocally that the answer is Yes! Yes! Yes!
We were proud to be a sponsor again at The Taste of East Cobb!
I can’t emphasize that enough! After seven years, I feel as bullish about this enterprise as I ever have.
As I have written previously in anniversary columns, this has been the most difficult work of my 40-year-plus career, transitioning from old-school newspaper reporter to new-fangled local online news publisher.
It’s been quite a leap. Of faith, and into the deep end, and many other things.
But it has also been the most gratifying work I’ve ever done. Connecting directly with readers and advertisers has required skills, patience, resilience and resourcefulness I never thought I could possess.
Building a news enterprise with so much decline in my profession and industry is something I’m very proud to have done.
But there’s still so much more building to be done.
As I mark the 7th anniversary of East Cobb News, I want to start off this new year with a new concept that brings together everything I had in mind from the start—blending the provision of local news and information with local business promotion and community-building.
As I like to tell anyone who asks why I do this, these things all go hand-in-hand.
New business openings—especially tasty ones—are a staple of our coverage of local commerce.
This new campaign, “The Power of Local,” will build on those three components. Whether it’s a story, an advertising campaign or a way for citizens to get involved in a worthwhile project, East Cobb News will be stressing all of those community connections.
It’s about demonstrating the power of a single place, the place we call home, East Cobb, and how it can help others, and redefine the community.
There are some details to be worked out as “The Power of Local” launches, and I will be sharing them here as they are finalized.
More than anything, it’s a way to message how vital all these components are to our community, and how they benefit from one another, and how we all benefit from them.
As we started out last year, we are continuing to ask for reader donations.
When people pitch in to help in the community, we love to share it with others. So keep sending us your group’s news!
You can help support us by clicking here, and donating whatever amount you wish.
We’re suggesting $6 a month on a recurring basis, but that’s up to you. You can learn more by clicking here.
We’re grateful to those who have contributed, and those donations are being used to help us cover the local news that you love, and that you have come to expect from East Cobb News.
This is a voluntary thing do do; we do not have a paywall and readers do not have to pay anything to read what they see here.
But if you value East Cobb News in any way, please consider making a donation.
If you are a local business and would like to learn more about how you can promote your business with East Cobb News, you can get an overview of our advertising options by clicking here.
We’re the only all-online daily news presence in East Cobb, and offer the best opportunities for continued, measured exposure that our competitors simply cannot match.
Our advertisers appreciate our flexibility, our affordability and our willingness to do what it takes to get their message in front of East Cobb’s most engaged audience.
We’d love to talk with you about reaching that audience too!
And for our readers—now having grown to roughly 80,000 unique monthly visitors and more than 9,000 newsletter subscribers—thank you so much!
At the heart of what we do is a full-fledged commitment to providing local news that nobody else is doing in East Cobb!
Thanks for your readership, your feedback, your suggestions, your news tips and items. You have made East Cobb News so much better with your contributions, and we look forward to engaging with you for another year.
To sign up for the newsletter, click here. To send your news, photos, calendar listings, recognitions, etc., click here.
It’s part of our core mission to champion local news and business, and to be a source of powerful community-building.
Thanks to so many of you, we have been able to accomplish some of that. With “The Power of Local,” we’ll be able to take it to another level!
Stay tuned for more details and enjoy the rest of your summer!
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We’re going to kick back on Independence Day with the rest of you while enjoying this most American of holidays and will get back to posting on Friday.
I just wanted to offer up a short note of thanks to all of you for your continued readership of East Cobb News.
We’re soon approaching our 7th anniversary—so hard to believe!—and we’ll be noting that in more detail in the coming days.
As I noted this time a year ago, the end of Year Six felt incredibly special. We continue to grow our audience and advertising interest from local businesses is also on the rise.
We’re generating more traffic than ever, as citizens, business owners, civic groups and others invested in the betterment of East Cobb turn to us for the latest news and information.
Providing my home community with local news that you depend on, and that is relevant to your lives, has been the honor of my long career in journalism.
Helping my fellow small business owners promote themselves to you also is deeply satisfying.
But I don’t think of myself as just a reporter, or editor, or publisher, or small business owner.
I am all of those things, indeed, but also I’m an East Cobber who appreciates the vitality and quality of life that I enjoy here, and that is made better by the many community connections that are forged here.
I’ve never taken a day of this now-seven-year journey for granted, and I don’t intend to. What I’ve learned along the way is that everything matters, and that becomes increasingly the case as time marches on.
Declaring my independence as a media operator wasn’t just for my sake; it was for a vision to serve my community, this place I call home, during a time in which local news is being threatened everywhere.
It’s getting harder to do this, but I’m as strongly committed as I was at this time in 2017, when I finally pushed the “publish” button for the first time and launched East Cobb News.
I guess that’s one of the reasons why July 4 is my favorite holiday.
I love the history and traditions of our nation’s founding, rooted in a spirit of independence, and that is bolstered by Constitutional provisions such as the First Amendment, so important to my profession and to an enlightened citizenry.
I’ll be back soon with more details on our reader support initiative to mark our 7th anniversary: It’s Called “The Power of Local.”
Happy Independence Day East Cobb! May you have a joyous and peaceful holiday!
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February is the shortest month, but the sweetest one.
A cliché perhaps, but with Valentine’s Day right in the middle, we’re asking readers once again for their support of East Cobb News.
This is our first request of 2024, and we’re very appreciative of those who have contributed when we began this effort last year and who continue to do so.
While access to all content on East Cobb News remains and will always be free of charge—including our Sunday newsletter—we’d like to ask readers who value what they get from our community’s only daily, all-online news source to consider making a contribution.
Every day we go deep into East Cobb, bringing you professionally-reported news and useful community information: local government and schools, crime and fire, courts, business and restaurant openings, quality of life issues and more.
We’re coming off our best traffic year ever in 2023, thanks to so many of you for your readership, with more than 1.7 million clicks.
Our audience keeps growing, as we average nearly 150,000 page views a month and more than 70,000 unique visitors a month.
That’s an important metric, as that latter figure is roughly one-third of our coverage area. We’ve also enjoyed growth with our newsletter as we approach nearly 9,000 subscribers, and are pushing near 20,000 in our overall social media reach.
Increasingly, local advertisers are seeing the value in having a dynamic digital presence to reach a growing, engaged audience. They tell us they love how hyperlocal we go with the news, and that translates into a hyperlocal focus for promoting their businesses.
As carry on with a new year, East Cobb News is adding features we think the community will enjoy. The East Cobb Biz Scene column, publishing on Monday, rounds up openings, closing and other news about local businesses with a focus on the people behind them and what makes them tick.
We’ve also launched a weekly short video feature called East Cobb On the Spot, where we visit with people involved in a variety of community activities. Look for that to be published on Friday-Saturday every week.
This year is an election year, and we will be providing coverage of local races and the Georgia presidential primaries in March.
We have some other plans in the works to give you even more of the local news you love, so stay tuned!
In the meantime, please consider making a contribution to support the work of East Cobb News—we recommend a recurring monthly donation of at least $6 a month, or $60 a year.
We’ve set up our subscription options along the lines of public radio fundraising drives, to accommodate whatever level you wish to support. You can donate on a recurring basis, or submit a one-time donation via the link below.
Our payment platform is hosted by Press Patron, which makes it easy to support independent local journalism. Several dozen publishers like East Cobb News are powered by this platform, and we’re proud to be a part of their community.
The Press Patron platform is safe and secure, and is connected with the prominent Stripe online payment system. When you sign up to contribute, you can control your account and payment preferences.
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
It’s hard to believe 2023 has come and is almost gone—it’s really flown by for me—and I wanted to leave you with a final message as we celebrate the holidays.
First of all, thanks to East Cobb News readers for your readership and your financial support.
This has been the best year for our 6-1/2-year-old site in terms of traffic and readership growth, and it’s very gratifying.
As I write this, we are approaching 1.7 million page views and more than 875,000 unique visitors.
That last figure is important, because it averages out to around 75,000 individual accounts that visit this site at least once a month. That’s around a third our coverage area of 200,000.
Our newsletter growth also has been very solid this year, as we recently surpassed 8,700 subscribers.
Our previous annual best for traffic was 2020, which was the year of the start of COVID-19 and an election year.
In 2023, we had none of those things, and readers have been coming to East Cobb News for a variety of reasons, and that’s what’s been so heartening.
Whether it’s coverage of local government and politics, schools news, crime, traffic, zoning, or new businesses and restaurants, readers have told us repeatedly how much they value what they get in one place—whether it’s daily on our site, via social media postings or through the newsletter.
There are more details in the video below, but I also wanted to thank those of you who have contributed to our “6 for 6” readership campaign this year.
We really appreciate the financial support as we strive to serve you with more news that’s relevant to you, and as we continue this experiment in redefining what local news can mean for the East Cobb community.
As I have said previously in this column, the local news landscape looks bleak and barren in many places, as legacy media—traditional newspapers, radio and television—have struggled to adapt to the digital age.
East Cobb News is all-online, publishing every day, with timely, professionally reported news and useful community information that makes a difference for the people who live here.
That’s who we do this for, and if you like what you see here and you haven’t donated before, consider making a contribution at whatever amount you like.
Simply put, East Cobb News readers are at the center of what this is all about. Unlike many other media outlets, we don’t charge to read our coverage, and we never will. No paywalls here.
We offer this news resource as a public service to the community, but we’re also a small business. We want to continue telling the stories of the people that make East Cobb a special place to call home for many years to come.
We also believe that local news and local business go hand-in-hand, and our advertisers are much like our readers—they tell us how much they like how deeply local we are. They want to reach local audiences, and there’s not a better-engaged readership in East Cobb than those who are part of East Cobb News.
But there’s so much more we want to do!
In the coming year, we want to go more in-depth with the news and features that our readers come to expect, especially with an election year coming.
I want to hear from you about what you value in East Cobb News, and ask how we can make this site better. I will be sending a reader survey out in early January, and I would appreciate the feedback.
In the meantime, I’d like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! We’ll be on a lighter posting schedule for the rest of the year, but stay tuned for our roundup of top stories of the year and other features as we approach New Year’s.
Seasons Greetings East Cobb and thanks for your readership!
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My goodness do we have so much to be thankful for in East Cobb.
I’m not thinking of the affluence of our community, especially since so many of our neighbors are struggling.
We have had the blessings of fairly good weather for the Thanksgiving holiday that just passed. Earlier Saturday I went to East Cobb Park on a mild, pleasant, partly-sunny afternoon and took a walk.
When my knees are ailing, this is hard to do, but I was determined to have a brisk excursion that was pain free, and so it was.
It was no small personal victory, especially after all the Thanksgiving fare.
As I took a break near the concert pavilion, some young guys were playing a rather spirited game of frisbee—it was really competitive.
The Barnes & Noble opening at the Avenue East Cobb was a popular story for our readers.
Nearby the trees that will be officially unveiled at next Sunday’s Holiday Lights celebration sit waiting, fully decorated.
You can feel the season in the air, to be sure, but in many ways what I have been sensing recently is the sheer gratitude of my community as we approach the holidays.
For the last few months East Cobb News has been asking readers to consider a financial contribution—much like public radio and TV—as we have been marking our 6th anniversary in 2023.
We’re going to continue the “6 for 6” campaign through the end of the year, in which we are suggesting a recurring monthly donation of $6, in honor of that 6th anniversary.
Some of you have been doing that, and for that, I am very grateful.
All of you who read, subscribe to our weekly newsletter and follow us on social media are a big part of the success of this community news site.
I wanted to share with you some very encouraging numbers as we close the books on an eventful calendar year.
Recently East Cobb News surpassed last year’s traffic of 1.46 million pageviews, and in the next week we should surpass our all-time yearly record of 1.556 million.
Likewise, we’re on pace to break our yearly unique visitor high of 866K. That’s an important metric because that’s the number of individual accounts that click on to East Cobb News every month.
Broken down on a monthly basis, we’ve been averaging between 70,000-80,000 unique visitors this year—roughly one-third of our coverage area.
East Cobb Barber Shop employees surprised one of their own for her birthday.
That’s a very good number, and one that I’m proud of. It reflects the deep level of truly hyperlocal coverage and engagement with a growing, community-minded audience.
And we’ve done that in 2023 with a wider range of high-impact stories than ever before. In 2021, when we posted those record numbers, much of that was due to coverage of the COVID-19 response, which was an extraordinary event, coupled with election coverage.
Election coverage drove our numbers in 2022, which also isn’t a surprise.
But this year, the strength of our coverage has broadened. Many of you come for local government and schools, crime and public safety, and zoning stories. What we in the journalism profession often call “hard news.”
Others like our stories about restaurants and retail openings and closings, the local business scene and real estate sales.
And others tell us how much they like what they read about community-level stories about people and non-profits helping those in need.
There’s certainly an overlap with much of that, and that’s what’s been so heartening.
Readers are coming to East Cobb News for a little bit of everything, and that’s been the objective all along.
That’s why we’re asking readers to help us continue giving you the local news you love.
We’ve set up our subscription options along the lines of public radio fundraising drives, to accommodate whatever level you wish to support. You can donate on a recurring basis, or submit a one-time donation via the link below.
The EAST COBBER parade returned for the first time since 2019.
Our payment platform is hosted by Press Patron, which makes it easy to support independent local journalism. Several dozen publishers like East Cobb News are powered by this platform, and we’re proud to be a part of their community.
The Press Patron platform is safe and secure, and is connected with the prominent Stripe online payment system. When you sign up to contribute, you can control your account and payment preferences.
We’ve got big plans for 2024, with another election year looming. But we want to go even deeper with all of the kinds of stories we know our readers expect from us.
That’s why we’re asking for your support today. We plan to add freelance contributors to help report on politics and many other local stories in 2024, and your donations will go to help pay for that.
We want to expand our coverage of sports and the arts, neighborhoods, health and wellness, home and garden and other subjects we can’t get too as often. We hear from readers who want to learn more about local history, and people-focused stories.
East Cobb News was proud to be a Taste of East Cobb sponsor.
We know how much you value East Cobb News, and we want to make 2024 our best year ever. This year’s progress has been gratifying, but I know we can do so much more for a community that has generously shown its appreciation for our efforts.
The hyperlocal focus of news is the foundation of everything we do, and local businesses that advertise with us and prospective advertisers have noticed that and have told us that as well.
They want to connect with an authentic, local audience, and nobody else is doing this every day in our community.
Simply put, East Cobb News readers are at the center of what this is all about. Unlike many other media outlets, we don’t charge to read our coverage, and we never will. No paywalls here.
We offer this news resource as a public service to the community, but we’re also a small business. We want to continue telling the stories of the people that make East Cobb a special place to call home for many years to come.
Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with questions about using Press Patron and contributing to our “6 for 6” campaign, as well as general inquiries about East Cobb News: wendy@eastcobbnews.com.
We’ll update you on our campaign in December. Thanks for your support, and Happy Holidays!
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Some last-minute food shopping is done, and a number of thank-you notes have gone out to supporters and advertisers of East Cobb News.
Another Thanksgiving season has arrived, and this one in particular has me feeling a great amount of gratitude and hopefulness.
This time of year is always a special one, and I want to take some time to thank all of you for your readership of East Cobb News.
As we marked our 6th anniversary in July, we began a fundraising drive asking readers to help support the work East Cobb News does in providing local news and useful community information.
The “6 for 6” campaign will go on through the end of the year, but I wanted to use this occasion to tell you how much your readership and participation with this site mean to me.
I hear from many of you in a variety of ways—e-mail, phone, text message, social media and even good old-fashioned regular mail—for a variety of reasons.
I get story tips and press releases, compliments and complaints, suggestions and queries about how to find something or someone in the community for assistance.
I try my best to answer every message, and while I know I can’t make everybody happy, I want to know what you think about what you see here on East Cobb News. I want to know how I can make it more relevant and helpful to you.
This is a big place with a lot of things going on and with citizens from many walks of life and holding many points of view. Making East Cobb News an online source of what happens here is something I’ve been very honored to develop, and there’s still so much more I want to do.
This community is mine, and I’m gratified by how responsive this community has been to this project.
So thanks. Thanks for reading, subscribing, commenting, getting in touch and donating.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family! May it be a peaceful and enjoyable one. We’ll be coming back on Friday with more news as the holiday season begins.
Until then, enjoy!
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We’ve set a challenging—but reachable—goal as we continue our fall fundraising drive at East Cobb News.
Between now and the week of Thanksgiving, we’d like to add 100 new subscribers who contribute $6 a month on a recurring basis.
That’s 25 new contributors a week as we ask for reader support to keep giving you the local news you love!
It’s part of the “6 for 6” campaign we launched this summer in honor of our 6th anniversary.
East Cobb News generates most of its revenue from local business advertisers, but we hear from readers all the time how much they value the news and community information they get from East Cobb News.
If that’s you, please consider donating $6 a month. That’s a couple of cups of drive-through coffee or less than a lunch entree.
Every penny of your support goes to providing you with more of the truly authentic local news that nobody does in greater depth in this community.
We’ve been at this since July 2017, after many years at a variety of local newspapers and local news outlets.
We cover the basics of local government and schools, politics and elections, crime and public safety, local business openings (especially restaurants!), arts and entertainment, recreation and quality of life issues in East Cobb.
We’re like a general interest newspaper except we’re all online, and we’re dedicated directly to our readers and advertisers.
We also partner with local businesses with dynamic digital advertising options that are more affordable and much more flexible than other media outlets in this market.
This is independent, homegrown local news and business promotion without a corporate filter. East Cobb News is all about community first!
We’d love to hear from you how to make this news and information resource better. Please e-mail me at wendy@eastcobbnews.com.
Click on the link below to sign up and donate, and thank you for your support!
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
It’s been feeling like fall for a couple weeks now, but as we launch our fall fundraising drive autumn definitely is in the air!
It’s windy and only in the high 50s, on the first day of our effort to get readers to consider supporting East Cobb News!
We’ll be coming to you through the end of the month from the many places we visit in the community—not just East Cobb Park, above, where we took a lunch break—but also from places where we cover stories and meet with local business owners.
The video below comes to you from the new Eastvalley Elementary School on Holt Road, which had a formal ribbon-cutting this morning.
As we did earlier this summer, when we marked our 6th anniversary, the East Cobb News “6 for 6” campaign is asking readers to consider what they value about the truly authentic local news and information they get, and to contribute accordingly.
We’re suggesting $6 a month on a recurring monthly basis, but you can give whatever you like—monthly, annually or on a one-time basis.
It’s like a public radio/TV pledge drive that you may be familiar with—and your contribution goes toward powering the work we do at East Cobb News to provide first-rate coverage of this community.
Our payment platform is hosted by Press Patron, which makes it easy to support independent local journalism. Several dozen publishers like East Cobb News are powered by this platform, and we’re proud to be a part of their community.
The Press Patron platform is safe and secure, and is connected with the prominent Stripe online payment system.
Follow the link below to contribute, and click here for more information about “6 for 6.” We’ll be updating you through the rest of October as we continue in this drive.
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
At the time, as we marked our 5th anniversary, I was getting down to some business I had planned before the pandemic: Securing office space, upgrading technology for advertising purposes and actively promoting the next stage of development for this news site.
It’s been an eventful and largely successful year, and I’ve come to regard Labor Day as a time to reflect, take stock of what’s happened and gear up for what’s to come.
One of my priorities continues for a few more months, as I recently launched a crowdfunding campaign, “6 for 6,” asking for readers to make financial contributions.
We did this in July, when we observed our 6th anniversary, knowing it was the middle of summer and people would be out and about.
Now that school is back in session and fall will be here soon (it feels a little like it this weekend!), we’re revving up our drive to ask you to help support the work that East Cobb News does in chronicling our community.
As I have said in previous appeals, this is totally voluntary—we do not have a paywall and do not charge readers for anything on our site or to subscribe to the newsletter.
But we hear from readers all the time about how much they value what they get from East Cobb News. If you agree, we’d like to ask you to consider making a donation. The amount can be whatever you like, but we’re suggesting $6 a month.
It’s similar to a public radio/TV fundraising drive, and every dollar is greatly appreciated. Thanks to all of you who have donated thus far!
We have a secure system on the Press Patron platform, which helps local news publishers like me solicit support from readers like you.
The video below explains more about “6 for 6” as well as what’s in the local headlines this week, and tells you more about what’s coming up.
Next weekend, East Cobb News will be taking part in the EAST COBBER Parade and Festival for the very first time. We won’t be marching down Johnson Ferry Road, but we will have a table at the festival, which takes place from 11-3 at Johnson Ferry Baptist Church.
Come by and say hello, pick up some East Cobb News swag and let’s get acquainted! I love meeting my readers and can’t wait to see all of you.
Have a fantastic Labor Day weekend, and please feel free to get in touch: wendy@eastcobbnews.com.
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Dance Stop Studios owner Lynette Strickland (center) and some of her teaching staff.
Last Saturday I had the privilege of profiling one of East Cobb’s longest-running businesses.
As we published earlier this week, Dance Stop Studios has begun its 50th year of offering dance instruction for youth and adults alike—from jazz and tap and classical ballet to yoga and Zumba.
Keeping people on the move, and in a healthy way, has been at the core of owner Lynette Strickland’s work.
As she told us, she started out in a small converted home in 1974 on the outskirts of East Marietta—the original East Cobb, if you will—and moved around as she needed more space.
Along the way, she taught a generation of young people about a love for dance that is obvious as soon as you step inside the studio space at the Merchants Exchange Shopping Center on Roswell Road.
Some of those former students are now among her teaching staff, including a woman whose own daughter is taking classes there.
The family atmosphere of many small businesses in our community is authentic, as I have learned in speaking with many of these entrepreneurs.
I admire their tenacity, resilience and vision, and their ability to adapt to trying conditions.
Most of all, I admire the sheer passion that continues to underline the work that they do.
They’ll tell you doing what they love doesn’t seem like work at all, despite the grind, tribulations and challenges that come with it.
That’s my outlook on what I have done with East Cobb News, as we enter our seventh year of giving you the local news that you love.
Many of you tell me this, and it’s so energizing to get this feedback on a regular basis.
I just got a note from someone sending in a calendar listing: “Thanks for your commitment to local news. There aren’t enough people like you—we need this info!”
The truth is, I love telling stories of people like these in our community as much as they do in sharing them with me.
That’s because this comes from the heart, and it’s about much more than just reporting the news.
It’s about building a sense of community that becomes more special with each new story I am honored to tell.
Last month East Cobb News began asking readers for financial support to continue the work that we’re doing. It’s called the “6 for 6” campaign, in honor of our 6th anniversary.
We’re asking readers to donate $6 a month, but any amount will be greatly appreciated. We have a few dozen individuals who have done that thus far, and we’re asking more of you to consider making a financial contribution.
We have set up a special page with more information and a link to donate to our crowdfunding platform, Press Patron, or. you can contribute directly below.
Press Patron is specially set up for local publishers like me who solicit support from readers. It’s encrypted and secure, and it’s flexible for any amount you’d like to give.
Contribute what you like, whether it’s monthly, yearly or a one-time basis. Here are some suggested levels of support:
Your support will help us continue to grow and expand and serve a community of nearly 200,000 people—that’s a lot of folks!
While this kind of community journalism does come from the heart, it also takes some resources to do as well as we would like.
Most of all, we want to continue telling the stories of the people that make East Cobb a special place to call home.
I explained all this and more recently in an interview (video below) with Atlanta public relations professional Mitch Leff, who also champions the work of local journalists and lets us tell our stories.
Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with questions about using Press Patron and contributing to our “6 for 6” campaign, as well as general inquiries about East Cobb News: wendy@eastcobbnews.com.
From the bottom of my heart, thanks for your readership!
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A juggler from Timber Ridge Elementary School at the EAST COBBER parade, which returns in 2023.
A week ago today we launched our “6 for 6” campaign to ask readers to support what we do at East Cobb News bringing you community news and information.
I’m humbled by the support we’ve received thus far, and wanted to say thanks to all of you who have contributed!
We’re calling it “6 for 6” in that we’re marking our 6th anniversary in July, and asking for a minimum contribution of $6 a month, or $60 a year.
Some of you have done that, and even stepped up those amounts more. We’ve gotten pledges for recurring monthly contributions of $12 a month and $20 a month, and a one-time contribution of $125.
I’m just blown away by the response, especially in the stifling heat of the dead summer.
What I planned as a soft launch with people on vacation has exceeded my expectations—so thanks again!
It’s called Press Patron, and it’s designed to help local news publishers like East Cobb News solicit support from their readers.
As I noted last week, I’d like to get 500 supporters signed up by the end of September and 1,000 by the end of the year. After our first week, we’re certainly on track to achieve that, and want to maintain the momentum.
We’d really like to encourage recurring monthly donations if you can swing that. When you click on the link to donate above, you’re not required to create account. But if you want to change your contribution settings, you’ll need to do that.
Please note that since we are a for-profit business, your contribution is not tax-deductible. But it will go a long way to help us keep giving you the local news that you love!
And during our initial “pledge drive” of sorts, we’ll include in these posts some of our favorite photos over the years, including the above taken at the EAST COBBER parade and festival, which is returning this September.
You depend on us to get you the news. We depend on you to help us financially. Now is not time to sit on the sidelines waiting for someone else to support local journalism.
We offer some affordable and dynamic ways to promote local businesses, and we’ve got enticing readership numbers to help those running small businesses to reach new customers.
Our “Six for Six” campaign also includes some advertising specials, so please visit this link for more.
Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with questions about using Press Patron and our contributing to supporters’ campaign, as well as general inquiries about East Cobb News: wendy@eastcobbnews.com.
Get Our Free E-Mail Newsletter!
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
Our first post—July 8, 2017—was about the Skip Wells Memorial Ride that began at Sprayberry High School, and we’ve been truckin’ ever since.
This month, East Cobb News turns six years old!
On July 8, 2017, we published our very first post, about a motorcycle ride to honor a fallen East Cobb high school graduate who was shot to death in a domestic terrorist act while serving his country.
Truth be told, I had declared my independence as a journalist well before that, as I was laying the groundwork for East Cobb News.
A quarter-century at newspapers and a few more for various online outlets helped prepare me to take on the task of building a news resource to last for this community, where our family settled exactly 50 years ago this year.
I chose this particular time to make it official and finally push the button, and the journey has been an interesting, challenging and very gratifying one.
As we have recently celebrated our nation’s independence, I’m asking East Cobb News readers to help us celebrate ours, as we have reached an important milestone.
For the first time, I’m asking readers to help support the work we do in serving you with news and useful community information.
We’re suggesting that you contribute a minimum of $6 a month, or $60 a year, in honor of the 6th anniversary of East Cobb News.
We’re calling it the “6 for 6” campaign, and for the rest of the year we will be encouraging all of you to help us out. We’ll have special promotions, swag and other goodies and giveaways for readers and supporters.
While those details are being worked out, let me be clear about a few things:
This is a totally voluntary campaign. You are not required to pay to read and use East Cobb News. You can click on to any link on our site, get our newsletter and follow our social media platforms as you have been without interruption, at no cost to you.
One of our first major events to cover was the opening celebration for the new Walton High School classroom building in late July 2017.
We appreciate our growing readership as we have built up an essential community resource.
A few numbers as we approach the end of 6 years:
Averaging 150K page views/month
Averaging 70K unique visitors/month
More than 8.3K newsletter subscribers and growing
Unlike other local media outlets, we don’t lock down our content behind a pay wall or require you to register to read stories. We don’t bombard visitors to our site with noisy pop-up videos. We don’t clutter our pages with out-of-town clickbait.
But because we’re committed to keeping East Cobb News free and accessible to all, we’re asking for your financial support today, as we continue to build a sustainable local news business that puts community first.
In order for us to do that, we need you to do two things:
Support our advertisers!
Becoming a paying supporter!
Well, three things actually:
Tell your friends, families and neighbors about us too!
Read more here about our recommended contribution options, and how to pay online or by other methods.
You can also donate an amount of your choosing.
Regardless of what you give, you can do so easily by clicking here.
Our payment platform is hosted by Press Patron, which makes it easy to support the journalism you love via one-time or monthly contributions.
The Press Patron platform is safe and secure, and is connected with the prominent Stripe online payment system. When you sign up to contribute, you can control your account and payment preferences.
We’re suggesting at the very least that you contribute $6 a month—in honor of our 6th anniversary!
Six bucks a month. Think about it. That’s a couple of cups of drive-through coffee. Or a lunch entreé. Or an after-dinner dessert.
(Is any of this making you hungry?)
East Cobb News readers eagerly await our coverage of restaurant openings and other “foodie” news.
That’s about what some of the most notable independent journalists in the country charge for their newsletters.
Unlike them, however, we don’t have tens and hundreds of thousands of subscribers and readers.
Local news doesn’t scale, but at its best it is deeply devoted to serving its readership.
That’s where you come in.
“6 for 6” is very similar to a public radio campaign, but for your hometown news site, lovingly started from scratch by a journalist who grew up here and calls East Cobb home.
The Power of Local
Over the last three-plus years, as the COVID-19 pandemic and the response to it affected every aspect of daily life, readers came to depend on East Cobb News for all the details about how this affected our community.
We know this not only because our audience numbers skyrocketed during that time, but also because of more direct feedback we got. Such as this reader who gets our newsletter, and who sent us this message:
“This is a fabulous publication. Thank you so much!”
You have no idea what a shot in the arm that has been as we navigated these unusual times with all of you. We never stopped working to catch you up with all the vital updates about the reopenings of businesses and schools, how to follow your local elected bodies online and how to help out those in need.
Here are a few other reader testimonials we’d like to share:
“You have a great sense of the community and what makes it tick.”
“Appreciate your deep and objective coverage. Thank you.”
“I read it religiously. I have lived in East Cobb for 43 years. It is my community of people and places. Keeping up with things tightens the feelingsI have for East Cobb. Basically, I love your publication!”
Community activism over the Sprayberry Crossing Shopping Center eventually led to a redevelopment project that’s currently underway.
As we have returned to normal, we’ve resumed chronicling the things you’ve come to expect from East Cobb News:
Local government, schools, public safety, getting around, development
Business openings, especially retail and restaurants
Events, quality of life issues and community service
Elections, candidate profiles and how to cast your vote
Human-interest features and the activities of our community’s youth
What we’ve seen in the last three years is how vital local news has become to a community, and people in East Cobb have been generous with their compliments and with their eyeballs.
We greatly appreciate the many reader contributions we get, letting us know about an event or fundraiser, honoring people for their good works and accomplishments, and sending along feel-good stories in a time of great stress and anxiety.
Now East Cobb News needs something else from you to continue doing the work we’ve done not just for the last three years, but for the last six.
To say launching East Cobb News was a labor of love is an understatement.
What was truly behind the idea was the sense of opportunity it presented to create something just for this community.
Journalism has been my profession for 40 years, but East Cobb is the place I’ve called home, and that nurtured my aspirations for my career and life.
But local news has taken a very deep hit as my profession and the news industry have been transformed over the last two decades.
There’s been so much destruction and job loss, and communities have been deprived of vital information they need.
As I wrote here last Labor Day, this is a time to build, and I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished thus far with East Cobb News.
Readers tell us constantly how important quality-of-life issues matter to them in our coverage of the community.
The Power of Now
You depend on us to get you the news. We depend on you to help us financially. Now is not time to sit on the sidelines waiting for someone else to support local journalism.
We offer some affordable and dynamic ways to promote local businesses, and we’ve got enticing readership numbers to help those running small businesses to reach new customers.
Our “Six for Six” campaign also includes some advertising specials, so please visit this link for more.
Business owners and marketing professionals can also check out our other advertising information. We have a variety of products and price points and most importantly, the flexibility to work with you to craft a package that fits your needs and your budget.
If you really want to stand out with your message, East Cobb News can give you something no other local outlet can provide—dozens of dynamic online display and newsletter formats, including video, slideshow gallery and rotating cube features that dazzle readers and convert into sales.
To me, The Power of Local also extends to local business, and East Cobb News is the ideal marketing partner for local businesses that are trying to thrive in the post-pandemic world.
We love to share news of new and expanded businesses in East Cobb—hey, we’re a local small business too!
We approach advertising the same way we do the news—as a fellow business owner and citizen, fully invested in our community. We want you to grow and thrive, because we understand how local businesses form the backbone of our community.
Now more than ever.
As we have recently celebrated the birthday of our nation’s founding ideals, we’d like to ask our readers to help us as we continue the work of providing independent, online local news and useful community information.
That’s our one and only mission, and it’s unlike anything else in East Cobb.
Please consider giving the suggested amounts with the options below, or whatever you like. While we greatly appreciate recurring annual monthly or annual contributions, we also accept one-time donations that can be renewed as you like:
Here’s the link to contribute, and to create an account with the Press Patron platform. It was formed with local news publishers in mind to help them grow and become sustainable.
I’ve set some substantial, but reachable goals for the “6 for 6” campaign: We’d like to have 500 subscribers by the end of September, and another 500 by the end of the year.
Frankly, I think we can achieve much more than that, and I’ll update those numbers and encourage more readers to take part as we go along in the coming months.
Please keep in mind that East Cobb News is a for-profit business. While your donations are not tax deductible, they will go a long way to help us keep giving you the local news that you love!
As always, please feel free to reach out with questions, news tips and advertising queries: wendy@eastcobbnews.com.
Enjoy your summer, stay safe and be well East Cobb!
As I packed my East Cobb News swag bag into my car Saturday morning, I took a deep breath.
I’ve been promoting this community news venture in a variety of ways since launching it in the summer of 2017, mostly on my site and newsletter and before the local business community.
But going before the larger community was something different. The Taste of East Cobb event on Saturday was a great opportunity to meet some of my readers, spread the word about it to those who weren’t familiar and reinforce the value of local news, community information and small business advertising.
It couldn’t have been a better day on the grounds of Johnson Ferry Baptist Church, weatherwise and otherwise.
People stopped by the booth, picked up pens, magnets and other goodies I laid out for them, chatted and signed up for the newsletter.
Many of them said simply this: “I really like what you do and I just wanted to tell you that.”
Or words to that effect. Also this:
“Keep up the good work.”
“I love how local it is.”
The response was exactly what I was hoping for, as the audience for East Cobb News continues to grow. Thus far in 2023 we’re averaging between 150,000-200,000 page views a month, and between 70,000-100,000 unique visitors a month.
More than 8,200 of you subscribe to the Sunday newsletter. What I wanted to gauge was what readers were interested in.
Not surprisingly, many of you said it was updates on local businesses and restaurants, as well as zoning cases and development issues.
Some wanted more political news, others wanted more news of a certain political bent, and some were grateful for news about events at East Cobb Park and other community venues.
For the newcomers who signed up, I mentioned the Community Guide of services, businesses and community entities. For those interested in advertising, I’m sending rate information.
One of my current advertisers, real estate agent Sheri Hardy, stayed for a while and offered her testimonial for advertising with East Cobb News, and left behind some Atlanta Braves schedules that were scooped up by many of you.
Oh, and the food. I was lucky enough to be located between the booths for Mediterranean Grill and Belen de La Cruz: I had gyros to the left of me and empanadas to the right.
The kind of community gatherings that we went without for a couple years seem so much more vital and meaningful now. I’ve attended the Taste of East Cobb before, and it’s different when you’re a sponsor.
You really get an appreciation for what it takes to stage such an event when you learn more about what happens behind the scenes.
The folks at the Walton Band Parent Association do a phenomenal job, and I’d like to thank them for how well they worked with this first-time sponsor. Thanks to Pam Duffy, who first reached out to me in February about getting involved, 2023 event coordinator J.J. McKelvey and photographer David Wilson, who let us use some of his many photos from the event, including the cool aerial shot below.
While event proceeds go to Walton High School’s band program, the entire community benefits as well from having such a festive gathering.
I can’t wait for the Taste of East Cobb next year, but East Cobb News will be doing more of these events in the coming months so stay tuned!
And thanks for your readership! As always, feel free to get in touch with your thoughts by e-mailing me: wendy@eastcobbnews.com or calling: 404-219-4278.
East Cobb Park and other county parks were closed for six weeks in the spring of 2020.
Three years ago this coming week, spring was in the air. So were the sounds of neighborhood children happily playing nearby. My dogwood tree had finished its usual late-winter bloom, replaced by bustling green leaves.
Birds were chirping, and pollinating bees were hovering too close by on my balcony.
As I write this today, on a beautiful first Saturday afternoon in March, the same scenario applies.
But there are some notable differences.
The howling of loud cars, often racing, is constant. At times it sounds like the Indianapolis 500, 24/7.
These annoying noises have become part of the soundtracks of our lives since the COVID-19 pandemic was declared here in Georgia and elsewhere during the second week of March 2020.
A few days ago, as I pulled out of my office park, three hot rodders were zipping up Johnson Ferry Road, flooring past the Dick’s Sporting Goods store.
They had a rare empty straightaway on that busy corridor and took advantage of it, and I briefly shut my eyes, fearing a crash that fortunately didn’t happen.
COVID data reflected the vulnerability of the very old and very sick, but public health officials favored restrictions against the young and healthy for months.
Life for most of us has returned to whatever seemed normal before, as the virus has mutated into into less lethal variations. Even those who believed we could eradicate a respiratory virus—something that’s never happened before in human history—now understand that COVID-19 is not going away.
While it was a tragic killer—more than 35,000 Georgians, and nearly 2,000 in Cobb County are among those who have died—the collateral damage stemming from the COVID-19 response figures to be immeasurable, and its effects will last far longer than the danger of the illness.
As surreal as the lockdowns were—something not previously done in Western, supposedly democratic nations—what’s even more troubling now is that there’s little appetite for scrutinizing those mitigations.
Even though many of the narratives—about mask and vaccine effectiveness and natural immunity in particular—are collapsing.
I’ve been skeptical of the restrictions all along, but as a journalist I felt I owed my readers an open mind as this saga unfolded.
During the height of the pandemic, Dr. Janet Memark, director of Cobb and Douglas Public Health, periodically briefed the Cobb Board of Commissioners about COVID-19. She provided data, explained why the precautions were needed and reminded all of us to do our part.
She was trying to be helpful and informative, but her script essentially followed whatever messaging came from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, whose credibility took a major blow during this pandemic.
Not long after then-Cobb Commission Chairman Mike Boyce said he was keeping county parks open during a state of emergency, he was persuaded by public health officials to close them.
For six weeks in the glorious spring, with our public health experts knowing the outdoors were not only not dangerous but healthy to be in—the gates were locked at East Cobb Park, Mabry Park and others in Cobb County. Playgrounds were closed for a bit longer.
It was absurd then, and it’s even more ridiculous recalling it now.
Dr. Janet Memark of Cobb and Douglas Public Health briefing commissioners
Just as bizarre was an impromptu meeting of the Cobb Board of Health in the fall of 2021, called essentially to shame the Cobb County School District into reimposing a mask mandate.
On the Zoom meeting, Memark was shown in a room by herself, wearing a mask. The district didn’t budge, but remains a defendant in a federal lawsuit over the lack of a mandate.
Even though Georgia was the first state to allow a wide swath of businesses to reopen, not enough of her clientele came back right away, and she closed her doors for good during the early summer.
A hair salon owner further down on Johnson Ferry was still feeling the effects of the closures in December 2020, admitting that federal government relief loans, while welcome, were not going to be enough.
Our state and local leaders here in Georgia and Cobb weren’t nearly as heavy-handed as their counterparts elsewhere, but they should be obligated to explain how they think their actions fared.
My guess is that’s not likely to happen, and not just because they can’t defend what they’ve done. There’s an unspoken desire to move on and put this behind us, but it’s not that easy.
On a personal level, covering COVID was an experience like no other. Of the few events I attended in person during those early months, they invariably required me to submit to having a temperature gun pointed at my forehead.
I approached a masked woman and her two young masked sons about why they came. We were outdoors, but she shrieked in horror because I wasn’t wearing a face covering.
She accused me of trying to harm her children and refused to talk to me. I’ve been given plenty of no-comment brushoffs in my career, but that one’s near the top of the list.
The woman pictured here without the mask—she had no problem talking to me, although she didn’t give me a last name.
I received a harrowing phone call from a mother after Cobb schools started the 2020-21 school year virtually, her two daughters aching to get back to school with their friends. The woman cried and poured her heart out, then thanked me for the therapy session.
Others left equally agonizing messages in early 2021, trying to schedule vaccination appointments. They were elderly, and the Cobb and Douglas Public Health website had crashed, and there wasn’t a phone number to call.
I’ve never felt more helpless.
As a human being, I wasn’t faring so well the longer the hysteria continued. After a family member had fought off COVID in early 2021, I was on a social media thread with familiar people and pushed back against those demanding vaccine mandates.
A former co-worker kindly informed me that I had the blood of hundreds of thousands of dead Americans on my hands.
The church I attended, like many houses of worship, remained closed for months, and when it reopened, it was very restrictive, with no singing or fellowship, and reservations were required.
My nephew in Florida didn’t get to have his high school graduation in 2020, as the anxieties of adults trumped the once-in-a-lifetime experiences of youth. At least Cobb seniors that year got to have commencement exercises, belatedly.
Lindsey Johnson, a member of Lassiter High School’s Class of 2020, didn’t get a traditional graduation celebration.
The power of fear was on display like I’ve never experienced before, and some people will never be the same.
These memories may seem distant now, and I can understand why many don’t want to revisit such a painful time.
But they can’t be memory-holed. Too many people lost their livelihoods and their bodily autonomy over the last three years. Their kids’ schooling was disrupted, social life was flattened and community bonds were ripped apart.
We’re lucky in East Cobb to be in a community that has been able to rebound from this ordeal fairly well, but many people are still hurting, financially, emotionally and socially.
This unprecedented, disastrous response to a virus with a high recovery rate needs to be fleshed out at every level, including in Cobb and Georgia.
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
Your editor’s happy place: Enjoying the fall colors at East Cobb Park.
Over the summer I asked readers to complete a survey to help guide the coverage and direction of East Cobb News, and I was gratified that nearly 100 of you responded.
I’ve been meaning to share some of the results with you, but as the Thanksgiving holiday approaches, I thought I’d use the occasion to express my gratitude for your readership and your thoughts on this community news service.
First, a little bit of the data:
56 percent of you access East Cobb News via our Sunday newsletter, which has been vital to our growth.
We now have more than 7,300 subscribers, and it’s been the single-biggest tool for expanding an audience that averages around 130,000 page views a month and nearly 70,000 monthly unique visitors.
That latter figure is telling because that’s roughly one-third of our coverage area.
Another 33 percent read East Cobb News directly from a web search, and 35 percent read on a mobile device.
When I asked what kinds of news readers like about what we provide, here were the top topics:
84 percent government news
76 percent restaurant/retail/business news
72 percent features and community events
72 percent crime/public safety
68 percent politics
54 percent school news
54 percent religious news
53 percent calendar listings.
Now, for some details on all this, including more of what you would like to see:
“Snapshot of this month’s festivals or major events around Georgia. Restaurant reviews or yelp summary, something curated to highlight top places to try.”
“Positive honoring inspiring stories.”
“I would like to see content reported with less bias. Also I would like to see content that reflects some actual reporting, rather than regurgitation of what some other publication has written/spoken.”
(Wish the last reader above would have specified examples of both of these points. As for the latter, East Cobb News broke or led coverage of East Cobb cityhood, the Tokyo Valentino adult store, the Mt. Bethel Church controversy and other topics that other outlets regularly followed.)
“Letters to editor, screened to provide balance and eliminate vitriol and ranting.”
“Development plans. Activities, classes, activities for seniors, groups to join, charities to contribute to by volunteering or donations. Local small business owners profiles. Environmental groups and developments. Highlight local recreational areas: nature center, parks, bikeways and associated activities.”
“I love what you are doing. I don’t need nor want anything else.”
“Less politics, unless it’s around an election.”
“Less news about Lisa Cupid.”
“If I had one piece of constructive feedback, it appears East Cobb News treads lightly when it comes to the Cobb County School District.”
“Concentrate on being the most authoritative and neutral source of truthful news. Stick to the facts and let the readers draw their opinions from the true facts. Don’t be a cheerleader for the Cobb County Commissioners.”
“Request readers submit stories, news, events they have first hand knowledge and involvement with! One or two interesting overviews! Ex. The day I met Neil Armstrong, my trip and who I met at the Masters!”
“Acknowledge varying points of view. Explain laws and ordinances, teach civics.”
“Perhaps consider a podcast?”
“More original content and photographs, not just repeating stories found in MDJ.”
“I’m glad you exist, MDJ doesn’t cover us and I can’t read their articles anyway.”
“You’ve become more balanced but still comes across as one sided politically.”
“I enjoy and appreciate East Cobb News. Please oh please, just don’t become partisan.”
“Continue to spotlight youth who are active in positive activities, especially helping others.”
“Tired of the biased community news outlets here in East Cobb. Seems the right leaning bullies rule everything here.”
“Appreciate your deep and objective coverage. Thank you.”
There are plenty more responses like this, and I value them all, even when they’re critical. There’s plenty of room for improvement and expanding the editorial product, and I will be taking all of this feedback into account.
The suggestions have been very helpful—a podcast is something I’ve had in mind and am seriously considering—and we’ll soon be publishing reader contributions and bringing on some freelance writers to help cover more news.
One thing that a number of readers in the survey said was that they wanted more stories about local small businesses, and we’ve done some of that recently and will be doing more in the coming weeks and months.
As I tell local business owners and advertisers, and those I’m trying to become advertisers, East Cobb News champions local news AND local businesses. They truly are the backbone of the community, especially because many of them give back to the community in amazing ways.
These were among my objectives when the COVID-19 pandemic was declared, and over these last two-plus years I’ve seen how much so many of you value what you read at East Cobb News.
That’s one of the silver linings that’s emerged from a very challenging time for all of us, and I’m thankful to all of you for sticking with us, getting in touch, pointing out corrections, providing news tips and suggesting ways to get better.
As I’ve mentioned before, the model I’m following is what another local independent online news publisher I admire calls “community-collaborative journalism.”
After decades in corporate media, I answer these days only to my community—to readers, businesses, organizations, entities and other individuals invested in this place we call home.
It’s been an interesting time in what’s not just a suburban bedroom community any more.
And it’s been an honor to have been able to do this for five and half years, and I’m thankful to all of you for reading and contributing your ideas.
As always, feel free to get in touch. I’d love to hear from you.
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
A participant in a 2018 town hall regarding the Sprayberry Crossing Shopping Center expresses a common sentiment of our times.
In April, the journalist-turned-venture capital entrepreneur Katherine Boyle penned a widely-read essay that really lit a fire under me at the right time.
A reporter at The Washington Post when Amazon founder Jeff Bezos purchased the newspaper, Boyle has had a front-row seat at the convergence of media and technology in the early 21st century.
She’s now a general partner at Andreesen Horowitz, the Silicon Valley VC firm started by Marc Andreesen, the web browser pioneer behind Mosaic and Netscape.
Boyle has made the leap of many journalists going into something else over the last two decades, as our profession and various media industries have been in major transformation if not rapid decline.
In her piece for the Common Sense newsletter founded by Bari Weiss, a former columnist at The New York Times, Boyle concluded that American dynamism is lagging primarily because we’re just not all that serious about building for the future.
She takes aim at the massive institutional decay and warped priorities that have marked our times. Yet she strikes a tone of optimism in closing when she writes that “We do not need aging institutions to pave the way for American dynamism. But we need American will.”
I nodded my head often while reading this blunt, but hopeful argument. This paragraph from Boyle in particular I want to shoot straight into my veins:
“Building is an action, a choice, a decision to create and move. It is shovels in the dirt with a motley crew of doers who get the job done because no one else will. Building is the only certainty. The only thing we can control. When the projects we believed were Teflon strong are fraying like the history they toppled, the only thing to do is to make something new again.”
I’m among the journalists who couldn’t imagine doing anything else but the news, and that’s what prompted me to start East Cobb News. The idea was to bootstrap it for a couple of years, then ramp up the editorial and business side.
In March 2020, just as I was seeking office space and lining up freelancers, the COVID-19 pandemic was declared, and we all know what happened next. I buckled up to cover a story unlike anything else in my 40 years as a professional journalist.
Building something from scratch is hard enough, but carrying on during such a surreal time was something I never imagined.
There were days when I literally did not know what day it was, or if I would ever write something that wasn’t about COVID.
As I’ve noted previously, we got major increases in web traffic due to extensive coverage of the local COVID response, which affected people in every aspect of their daily lives.
That was a silver lining, to know how valuable your product has become to others, and I’ve tried to identify others as we appear to have put the worst of the pandemic behind us.
As another Labor Day holiday approaches, I feel very gratified to have made it this far, re-energized and grateful to the community that we’re serving.
I hear from readers frequently about how they appreciate what they read at East Cobb News, and I can’t overstate how much that means to me. I get some complaints, too, and try to address them in the same way as the compliments.
It was 14 years ago this week that I left the newspaper business, when I took a buyout at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I was taken aback this week to read that the place that nourished my career over 18 years appears to be ending daily print editions, publishing a newspaper only on the weekend.
This scenario isn’t all that surprising, and other newspapers are likely to follow suit.
The ink-stained wretches in my profession have been nostalgic about the old days for years. While I will always love what newspapers have been (for the most part), the news isn’t about a delivery system. It’s not about the feel of a newspaper in your hands with your morning coffee.
Tactile pleasures aside, it’s about the news, and the best way to provide it and deliver it to a readership. That’s why it’s imperative to keep building outlets that meet their readers and advertisers where they are.
The slogan under my masthead is “Local News for the Way You Live Today,” and that’s my the premise of my building project.
I’ve watched my own industry evaporate in front of my eyes, and chronicled the last couple years of death and loss during a pandemic, tearing and burning things down, the ripping apart of the social fabric and the public trust. All I want to do is keep building, keep making this site the best it can be for a community that nurtured me.
It’s not on a scale of the tech companies or a larger news media entity. I’ve planted a seed where I am, and want to cultivate it.
Most of all, I want to build something that will outlast me. A former colleague at Patch who started her own news site and magazine in Walton County has sold them to the local newspaper.
Her example and determination helped inspire me to start East Cobb News. Cynthia Rozzo, the founder of the EAST COBBER, recently sold the magazine to her advertising manager, Laren Brown, who is carrying the publication into its third decade.
That’s remarkable staying power, something I hope to realize some day. But there’s still a lot of building to do. I’m unpacking the results of a recent reader survey, and plotting out editorial and business objectives for the rest of the year.
For the first time in a long time, however, I’m going to take a couple days away from the screen, Sunday and Monday—barring major breaking news—and absorb the true meaning of Labor Day.
I hope you will too, and I encourage you to stay in touch.
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
East Cobb News reader Bob violated two tenets of online commenting: Typing in all caps—signifying yelling—and venturing off the topic. Don’t be like Bob.
Ever since I made the switch to online journalism nearly 20 years ago (how time flies!), I’ve constantly wrestled with how to handle reader comments.
The immediacy and engagement can be beneficial components to building a thriving audience for community news.
And yet the instant availability of digital technology to cause mayhem and spread toxic messages often overwhelms those more noble aspirations.
Even before the age of blogs, social media and smartphones, online communication was an open sewer for mischief, threats, insults and worse.
If you remember the “alt” message boards of the late 1980s-early 1990s, you know what I’m talking about. Compared to today’s performative Twitter mobs, they truly resembled the Wild Wild West.
There were no moderators, almost everyone was anonymous and good luck getting anything taken down that was truly distasteful or even slanderous.
Perhaps I’ve become a bit numb, and even jaded, by what I read online to understand how this atmosphere can strike a nerve with readers today.
At more than 27K pageviews and counting, it’s the most visited post on East Cobb News in our 5+ years of publication.
Stories like that tend to generate plenty of reader comments, and this one certainly did.
For the most part, readers were civil, if irate.
Then somebody hit the CAPS LOCK BUTTON and didn’t turn it off for a good while.
That was a response to another reader complaining about having fled a “police state” in Cobb County that’s led by “Commie Democrats.”
And so on it went like this for a brief sequence, running a bit afoul of our Comments Policy.
Another reader noticed all this, and e-mailed me. He said he appreciates reading about local news and issues at East Cobb News, but “I’m not sure what benefit your comment section brings to your news organization. It’s kind of a dumpster fire and I’ve never seen a productive conversation happen on it. Literally just people calling each other ‘commie’ and other names.”
He makes good points, and I replied that for the most part, readers here don’t get that far off the chains. We’ve had a fairly respectful environment for community conversation in spite of the limitations on online platforms, not just on the site but our social media channels as well.
Shortly after our exchange, I shut off reader comments for that post, linked to our policy and revised it to include the following:
Before posting a comment, ask yourself this: Would I say this to someone in person or over the phone? Also, read through your comments for spelling, grammar, etc.;
In other words, behave like an adult on this platform.
When I was an online editor at the AJC, I had to moderate comments during the sordid saga of Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick, as he faced charges of being involved in a dogfighting ring.
For weeks before and then after he was hauled off to federal prison, his football career destroyed, I waded through some nauseating comments, chucking more into the “unapproved” bin than I ever imagined.
What Vick copped to was indeed reprehensible, but after my moderating shift was over, I felt like I needed to take a shower.
We all need a place to vent and rant, but online forums unfortunately have become havens for increasingly vile, putrid expressions.
Frankly, I expected East Cobb News coverage of the Tokyo Valentino adult store and the controversy at Mt. Bethel Church to generate some red-flag comments (sex and religion!).
While they certainly prompted some racy reactions to the former and some biblically-inspired pronouncements to the latter, it was nothing that couldn’t be managed.
It is possible to express strong views without boiling over.
In our increasingly overheated times, many media outlets have decided to dispense with allowing comments at all, and not just major corporations.
Another local independent online news publisher here in Cobb County just switched the off button, for many of the same reasons others have.
For the time being, I’m going to leave them on and keep them going. I still think there’s an opportunity to have civil exchanges on important topics.
Most of you do that; it’s always a small handful that ruins it for everyone else.
I may come to regret this, and there likely are trolls out there waiting to lick their chops.
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It’s been a momentous ride through the first five years of East Cobb News.
I sit down to write this very special Editor’s Note exactly five years to the day I published the first post on East Cobb News.
July 8, 2017 was a Saturday, as punishingly hot then as what we’ve been experiencing in recent weeks, and I scrambled to find some shade in the parking lot at Sprayberry High School.
The Cherokee Wingmen Club had organized a fundraiser to benefit the Lcpl Skip Wells Foundation in the memory of the Sprayberry graduate and Marine officer who was killed in a terrorist attack in 2015 at the Chattanooga Naval Marine Reserve Center.
The lot filled with motorcyclists and as they revved up their engines, the sound roared across that busy Northeast Cobb quadrant with a vengeance.
As they filtered out onto Piedmont Road (see photo at the top), I hoped I had enough good photos to put together something publishable with my maiden post.
Among the many good news stories we’ve done at East Cobb News was the 30th anniversary of the Good Mews cat shelter.
To be honest, I had no idea when I set out for Sprayberry that day what I was going to do, or if anyone would notice. Not just for that story, but for others that followed.
It was just about getting started with an independent, truly community-focused local news website that I had planned for several months.
What I simply dubbed East Cobb News was actually the culmination of several years of reimagining more than 25 years of journalism experience in the corporate world.
Local news has been especially vulnerable to the catastrophic declines in legacy news media, and local news operations rooted in specific communities are even more endangered.
Corporate media entities like Gannett and investment firms and hedge funds have gobbled up local newspapers and stripped them down to practically nothing, booting longtime journalists and robbing citizens of vital news and information.
A hardy band of independents scattered across the country has been trying not just to fill the gap but offer a throwback to community news the way it used to be done.
My vision wasn’t original—serve readers and advertisers with professionally reported news and useful community information. The blessing of having an all-online format was that this could be done without being beholden to a print production cycle.
I had previously tried my hand at this as the founding editor of East Cobb Patch, a hyperlocal network started by AOL. After that effort foundered, AOL sold it off and I was out of a job.
A drive-by holiday light display shone brightly during two Christmas seasons under COVID.
But a seed was planted in my mind that a ground-up, grassroots approach would serve East Cobb well.
The comments I got from readers was encouraging. Yet going at it this way, especially in an area with The Marietta Daily Journal and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution—where I had spent most of my newspaper career—and other local outlets was daunting.
Another hyperlocal publisher told me when I started that if you can persevere, you can make it. I had no idea then what that would entail.
Five years, and nearly 4,000 posts later, I’m proud of what’s been built at East Cobb News. Over the last year, we’ve been averaging more than 120,000 page views and 60,000 unique visitors a month, and our newsletter subscribers total nearly 7,000.
There have been challenges and struggles and occasions when I questioned whether what I was doing would ever be enough.
In early 2019, I lost my mother, and that had a profound effect on me that continues today.
For the last two and a half years, the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically altered many things. It provided me with a silver lining, as traffic increased due to coverage of the community response, especially schools, business closings, events and more.
Readers had come to this site to learn about those things, and some had expressed the value of what they found here. That, more than anything, helped me to keep pushing forward.
An East Cobb Cityhood effort that began in 2018 resulted in a whopping defeat in a May referendum.
There were days during those initial months of COVID when I wondered if I would write about anything else.
When the vaccines arrived, I received harrowing phone messages from frantic seniors, unable to contact the health department, desperately trying to book appointments.
Then we had educators in the Cobb school district who had died from COVID, and blistering criticisms of the district and school board ensued. Not long after that, a family member of mine became seriously ill from the virus, and it was touch and go for a few weeks before he began to recover.
It was in early 2021 that was the most difficult stretch, when I began to think if I wanted to continue with this. In a long career as a reporter, editor and now publisher, had I had enough?
But readers and so many others in the community helped me through, not just with comments and helpful feedback but by sending their own news of recognitions, honors and accomplishments.
There were so many important stories to tackle that have galvanized this community that couldn’t be ignored: The East Cobb cityhood saga, the Tokyo Valentino adult store controversy, the Mt. Bethel Church dispute, the Sprayberry Crossing and East Cobb Church rezoning cases.
Citizens demanding the redevelopment of Sprayberry Crossing Shopping Center finally got their wish.
East Cobb News broke and/or led coverage of those stories, the stories that have the biggest impact to this community. I’m especially proud of that, and if it sounds like bragging, my apologies. Focusing on what really matters to a community is the foundation of everything I do.
After a lifetime of answering to corporate managers, and doing the news to curry access to movers and shakers, there’s nothing more gratifying that working on behalf of your neighbors and fellow local business owners and community members.
There is so much more work to do in a vibrant community that continues to change, and I’m eager to get started with that.
We have another round of elections in November, and a new school year is just around the corner. Zoning and development issues continue to resonate in East Cobb, and many local businesses are trying to regain their footing and figure out this post-pandemic world.
So is East Cobb News. Many of the editorial and business plans I set aside as COVID-19 was declared I’m restarting and revising now, and you’ll hear more about them soon.
I’ve sent out a reader survey to ask all of you what you like about East Cobb News, and what you don’t, what you think we can do different, or better.
Your responses (here’s the survey link) will help me guide the next phase of this publication, which I want to grow beyond daily news.
I’m reading through some of the survey results now, and they’re very interesting and helpful. I’ll share them in a future column.
While I don’t really get into too much anniversary stuff, I wanted to take this occasion to thank all of you for your thoughts, suggestions and support over these last five years.
East Cobb News is in this for the long haul, and I want to fashion this into a community voice for all of you. There is no more honorable mission.
Enjoy the rest of your summer, and please stay in touch.
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
