By Guy Page
A Democrat and former journalist paid Vermont Daily Chronicle a big compliment last week. Sitting together in the State House cafeteria, he said that VDC is approaching VTDigger in terms of reach and coverage.
To which I said ‘thank you very much,’ but to myself said, ‘not really, not yet.’ Anne Galloway’s visionary, spunky online start-up was pooh-poohed by many (including me) when she started Digger over a decade ago, but oh my. From a tiny seed grew the mighty mustard tree.
Are we “We try harder” Avis to Digger’s #1 Hertz? I dunno. Jury’s out on whether we try harder, or where we really stand in Vermont reader news ratings. WCAX, WPTZ, Seven Days and Vermont Public also have their noses to the grindstone.Suffice to say we’re all focused on what happens beneath the Golden Dome.
But VDC is growing. Here are the metrics:
A year ago our Vermont Daily Chronicle Facebook page followers numbered only a few hundred. Now they total 6.9K and growing daily. Our J.D. Vance Visit coverage had 1.7 million views (1.2 million on a single video, a record so far) on Facebook, and already has 87,000 views on just two posts about Wednesday’s transgender activist disruption at the State House.
Our X page of VTDC802 also is growing steadily, with just under 1,000 subscribers.
And our daily edition subscription list is at an alltime high, over 5,500.
Www.VermontDailyChronicle.com is on track to exceed 2.6 million views in 2025, about 50% more than last year’s record number.
Speaking of our FB page – anonymous/pseudonym commenters who are unhappy with the updated real, full name comment policy on our VDC site like our FB page because you don’t need to use your real, full name. I’m happy to report that (almost) all of our vermontdailychronicle.com regular commenters have seen the value of real, full names, or have at least accepted the policy change. It’s a work in progress. Meanwhile the ‘can’t go there’ commenters can go to our FB page.
Our YouTube page, used mostly for Friday at Four but also to post videos like the Vance visit and the disruption of the detransitioning event, has grown from just a few dozen a year ago to 676.
We’ve done very little paid promotion for any of these platforms. Facebook has benefited from some, but most of the growth there is ‘organic’ reader interest and as for the rest, the growth is 100% reader/viewer interest driven. Thank you to every reader and/or viewer who has shared our posts! That’s what in the old-fashioned business world we used to call ‘word of mouth advertising,’ the very best kind.
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