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Tyee News

Thanks to You, the Tyee's Best Year Ever

However you wish to measure our success, the credit goes to you and all our supporters.

David Beers 1 Jan 2010TheTyee.ca

David Beers is editor of The Tyee.
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Ready to swim into 2010!

The Tyee celebrated its six year anniversary this year. We've come a long way since launching in November of 2003. We have you, who read and comment upon our offerings, who support this experiment with your intelligence (whether critical or enthusiastic), and who even sometimes share your cash, to thank for our success.

We wish you a very happy new year, and hope that you may look back with contentment on 2009.

This has been The Tyee's best year yet by several measures, including:

Rising traffic. The number of people reading The Tyee saw a significant jump in 2009, a year when most traditional media was stumbling. Compared to 2008, the number of visits by British Columbians rose 26 per cent, and the number of pages they viewed went up 32 per cent. Since Jan. 1 of last year, British Columbians have viewed 4,838,580 Tyee pages.

Overall traffic increased as well, with The Tyee's total number of visits for 2009 reaching 3,167,783, and page views hitting 6,561,785.

(We first began tracking such overall numbers in November 2005. Since then, The Tyee has received 11,417,368 visits and 22,879,756 page views. When we started back in 2003, our first question was: Will anyone read us? Guess you've answered that one.)

Your engagement and financial support. This year, you and our community of Tyee visitors made history by helping to innovate a new model for supporting independent journalism. Facing tight finances in April, yet on the eve of the provincial election, we asked you to help guide our editorial focus by telling us which election issues mattered most to you, and we invited you to help support that reporting with a financial contribution. Result: The Tyee led the field in B.C. election reporting with more than 260 original articles in the space of a month, funded with nearly $25,000 in donations, in the average amount of $50. Your votes of support for The Tyee made news across Canada and beyond.

Recognition. The Tyee had a bumper year for praise and prizes. In June we reached a Canadian pinnacle by receiving the Canadian Excellence in Journalism Award. The next month we learned we had won the Edward R. Murrow Awardfor best news website in North America (the previous winner being the Washington Post). This year we also received three top prizes in the newly launched Canadian Online Publishing Awards and Sean Condon's reporting netted an international award for coverage of homeless issues. The Tyee's political blog was named a Webby Honoree and our stories were finalists in two Webster Award categories. The

Tyee also was named a top B.C. innovator by BC Business Magazine and was profiled positively in the Globe and Mail.

Evolution. We redesigned our website, saw an immediate bump in traffic, and were judged Best Overall Design by a national panel. Still, we've listened closely to the constructive criticism some of you have offered, and intend to make some tweaks to the new look in the coming weeks. We've also changed our physical presence. This summer we renovated and moved into offices in Vancouver's historic Chinatown district.

The Tyee's greatest hits of 2009

There are various ways to measure the impact and popularity of a Tyee story. You could just count the clicks. However, as we are committed to serving B.C. as a region, we drilled down a bit deeper into our aggregate traffic statistics to find out what stories British Columbians, specifically, have most read on the Tyee over the past year. By that measure, our top dozen stories of the year were:

Why Canada's Housing Bubble Will Burst, by Murray Dobbin

Furious Rebuke to Suzuki, Berman, by Bill Tieleman

Chris Shaw Was Right! by Rafe Mair

In Defence of the HST, by Calyn Shaw

Make Love, Not Porn! by Vanessa Richmond

Yes, Sell the Rivers and Make Legal Some Slave Contracts, by Walter Block

BC Ferries' Spin Plan Exposed, by Andrew MacLeod

Biggest Tax Shift in History: Why Did Campbell Do It? by David Schreck

Harmonize This! by Bill Tieleman

Why the NDP Has a Shot, by Monte Paulsen

Affordable Housing: Five Myths, by Monte Paulsen

Campbell Wants to Repeal Waterways Access Law, by Andrew MacLeod

What Hooked you?

Of about 3,000 items posted this year to The Hook, the Tyee's political news blog, the dozen items most read by British Columbians were:

Oilsands 'change everything' says Ignatieff, by Tom Barrett

Fear the NDP, not 'this recession for sissies': Rob MacDonald, by Monte Paulsen

Fox news laughs at Canadian Forces, by Crawford Kilian

Tar Sands are Canada's 'Mordor': Barlow, by David Ravensbergen

Clip and Save: The STV voting system explained, by Greg Joyce

BC Liberals to win 56 seats, NDP 29: Kennedy Stewart, by Monte Paulsen

'I'm a Liberal supporter': Suzuki foundation chairman, by Bob Mackin

'He can't give you the finger in those things': PM Harper, by Andrew MacLeod

Some New Democrats want to 'take back' NDP, by Crawford Kilian

BC NDP candidate steps down over Facebook photos, by Sunny Dhillon

Canwest freezes all hiring, salaries, travel, by David Beers

BC Conservative party rolls out platform, candidates, by Adrian Nieoczym

More to come

It's important to note that The Tyee's growing readership and support is due to you spreading the word and because of your commitment to making us better, even when that means leveling frank criticism.

We do not make a profit, have virtually no marketing budget, and yet have managed to become a well-recognized source of news and ideas in British Columbia in a relatively short time.

Our writers are often sources for other media and appear on radio and television. Our stories are widely reprinted.

We train young journalists and, funded by you, our readers, make Tyee Fellowship grants to underwrite in-depth reporting projects.

We have partnered with philanthropic organizations to produce award winning research and reporting, the latest being Monte Paulsen's A Home for All series and PDF on finding solutions to affordable housing in B.C.'s high priced market -- an investigation made possible in part through the support of Tides Canada Foundation, the Catherine Donnelly Foundation, and the Van Tel/Safeway Credit Union Legacy Fund, held and managed by the Vancity Community Foundation.

We believe we are fulfilling our original mission to not simply produce "content" as commoditized bits and bytes for sale and consumption, but to contribute solid, credible reporting from fresh angles in order to enhance the democratic conversation about how to build a better society.

When it comes to building The Tyee, all thanks go to you who are reading us now. Please stay tuned! We have new innovations and exciting developments in store for 2010. [Tyee]

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