Bill Watson

Mr. Watson  has been a journalist since 1972, serving 20 years with The Press of Atlantic City before moving on to jobs with The Herald in Rock Hill, S.C., The Tribune in Elkin, N.C., and now the Pocono Record, in Stroudsburg, Pa.  He recalls being laughed at in the 1970s when he suggested newspapers could use fax machines to create a subscribed business news newsletter and is delighted that times have changed and new ideas are more often embraced than scorned.

Mr. Watson was managing editor at the Pocono Record for almost nine years and functioned briefly as online editor before becoming executive editor in January 2007. The Pocono Record, with 32 full time news staff and as many as eight part-timers, has no separate online news department but does have a vigorous, nimble online product. The same news staff that does print and online also produced more than 600,000 text messages to cell phone subscribers in 2007 and sends out email newsletters in various categories to thousands of subscribers, all of which drives traffic to online. Even news clerks can post to the Web site.

Web traffic at the Pocono Record averaged 7,500 unique visitors daily in 2006.  The daily average in January 2008 is 14,294.   Ad revenue grew by more than 60 percent in 2007 and the number is 97.5 percent "pure" online revenue, no allocations from print.