News Website Rises in Ratings to #3 in Coachella Valley and Palm Springs Region

DESERT HOT SPRINGS, Calif. - Aug. 13, 2013 - PRLog -- COACHELLA VALLEY, CA - Consumers choices for sources of news is changing as data just released by Statscrop.com shows. While traditional news outlets in broadcast and print dramatically slides in ratings, many are being eclipsed by non-traditional new sources - all online. The start-ups have not just dropped the traditional methods for delivering the news, they also have adopted some very non-tradtional names like Scavenger News, Gateway Pundent and Desert Vortex News http://www.desertvortex.com

By using a variety of independent auditing and analytic tools some surprising results are revealed. Traffic on one local start-up has risen dramatically in the last twelve months since its inception. It looks like they must be doing something right according to independent figures that value the domain at $40,474 and tag advertising revenue at $52 per day.

Desertvortex.com is now 1 year old, it is ranked #260,766 in the world, and 48,767 US. A low rank means that this website gets lots of visitors. Desertvortex.com gets 2,814 unique visitors a day with 11,256 page views. This means most readers engage the site after the landing page by reading more than two additional pages. Google indexed 2,310 and Bing indexed 499 pages. Alexa counts over 160 backlinks, the count of other websites linking to DesertVotex.com. Even with a PageRank score of just 1, the domain authority ranks 31 out of 100 with the site also listed on DMOZ

Successful Muckracking
With a focus on muckracking, and a relentless take-no-prisoners attitude, perhaps it is no wonder why success is won by publishing investigative reporting, especially that which might be too challenging or too hot to handle for traditional media. Increasingly the new media are breaking news stories, a phenonemun started by The Drudge Report. The online news services do not seem to be following the 250 word news summary adopted as the standard of the mainstream press.

Middle of the Road Not Safe
"We are finding that details are not boring," said Dean M Gray, Desert Vortex News publisher and investigative reporter who founded the project. "Middle of the road is not a safe place to drive. Our willingness to cover the story has produced results." Gray hangs his hat on advocacy journalism that is not always AP Style or unbiased. "We invest heavy with social media," Gray added.

The website follower counts are 203 for Facebook and 355 for Twitter. Desert Vortex News boasts associated pages and accounts on LinkedIn, Google+, Tumblr, Pinterest, Yelp, Manta, Alexa, YouTube, Flicker, Corkboard, AllVoices, Google Places, Blogger, Yahoo Business Listings, Reddit, Digg, Delicious, Stumbleupon, Foursquare, Newsvine, Newsle, Muckrack, Scoop.it and Bebo to name just a few.

Fixing Whats Broken
"We believe that media has a responsibility to use every tool to help fix what is broken," Gray said, "If you don't know what is broken then it can never get fixed. Not everyone likes to know what is broken and some people want to pretend everything is OK or hide things because they don't want to get caught. That's unfair to the rest of us who deserve something better. Sometimes we have to write a story, sometimes video or audio or cartoons best explain things. Sometimes it's public speaking and at other times it means using a social media tool." Gray mentioned having suffered criticism for his community action.

"I've been called a lot of names and a lot of bad things been said about me that are untrue. It's not about me and was never about me. I'm just a writer and watch, listen, learn in an investigation. The story is what matters. I paint a picture of what is true; that's all that's important."

With a reputation as a writer of breaking stories followed by television, radio and the daily newspaper, last year Gray sold the regional weekly newspaper he founded to a Los Angeles media group joining their portfolio of twenty other community newspapers in their southern California. Then Gray launched his online investigative reporting newsroom.

Sold Successful Business
"I'm most proud of the fact we created six full-time jobs that never before existed," said Gray of the business he sold. "We saw the writing on the wall that print was going away. We first started our newsroom business online, then got side-tracked with printing on paper and the costs sustaining that. I had always figured that when the price of an electronic reading device fell below $100 that would signal the end of us spending $2,000 a week doing paper printing. I been around long enough to see that these tablets are a like calculators. Once calculators were big and clumsy and cost more than a thousand dollars. Today those calculators are free on your cell phone."

Start at Age of Nine
Dean Gray started in the newspaper business at the age of nine earning 90 cents a week walking 3 miles delivering a newspaper door to door. 500 miles later he graduated to a bicycle route. Delivering news evolved into reporting news when he started publishing his first independent newspapers in high school. His inspiration was the LA Free Press by Art Kunkin and The Realist by Paul Krassner. The name Gray choose to title his first newspaper was "The Truth" and at the age of 17 was selling local business advertising to generate revenue to pay the costs of production.

As editor for the student newspaper at the California College of the Arts, in Oakland from 1971-73 Gray also studied graphics, creative writing, sculpture and environmental art. He has been published in newspapers and magazines and has been writing his way out of a paper bag and traveling uphill ever since. In the early 1990s Gray threw himself into the emerging Internet business working as the Marketing Director for several Internet companies. He then founded and served as President of Computer Careers, a California state licensed vocational school and Microsoft Test Center. He is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists and Investigative Reporters and Editors and lives in Desert Hot Springs, California.

EVALUATING LOCAL NEWS SITES:

MyDesert.com from The Desert Sun newspaper is 6 years old, ranked #45,445 world and ranked10,022 US. This site is worth $225,067 with advertising revenue at $80 per day. It has 10,206 unique visitors with 21,433 pageviews per day.

Kesq.com is 15 years old, ranked #93,232 world, 18,574 US

Kmir6.com is 13 years old, ranked #315,285 world, 68,898 US

Desertstarweekly.com is 4 years old, ranked #1,316,906 world, 184,054 US

Desertlocalnews.com is 8 years old, ranked #2,736,804 world, no US data.