Lagniappemobile.com sees boost

Most places I go people ask how things are going in the four months since Lagniappe went weekly, and I have a great story to tell them.

It’s been not only a good business decision for us, but also, we think, has improved our coverage and the journalism we’re producing.

Of course that’s just my opinion and readers and advertisers will vote with their eyes and their pocketbooks if we don’t produce. So we’re keeping the pressure on ourselves to be as good as we can be.

One area where we’ve seen some tremendous growth since April is on our website, lagniappemobile.com. Our July statistics are up 95 percent in July from where they were in April. That breaks down to almost 63,000 sessions and 40,000 users in July.

So keep checking us out online and remember the site is responsive, so it’ll work on your phone, pad, laptop and desktop equally well. Thanks for helping us grow.

Anderson joins AMG sports coverage

The folks at Alabama Media Group and al.com have announced the addition of former Sports Illustrated writer, author and current University of Alabama journalism instructor Lars Anderson as a special contributor.

According to al.com Anderson was a former senior writer at SI and will be producing articles throughout the upcoming 2014 college football season.

In addition to working with SI and the University of Alabama, Anderson is the author of six books.

Reporters attacked

There was a small reminder last week that even local journalism can sometimes be a bit risky. Upstate in Blount County July 23, ABC-TV 33/40 reporter Sherrie Evans and photographer Justin McCray were attacked while trying to cover a fatal shooting.

The shooting occurred in Locust Fork where a man named Ayatollah Khomeini Muhammad was killed in mid afternoon. Seven hours later as they got ready for a live shot at 10 p.m. the two were reportedly attacked by a woman living in the home where the shooting took place.

According to their account of the incident, the woman shoved both Evans and McCray, attempted to destroy video equipment and actually shoved Evans into a ditch, where she was scraped and bruised.

The story reminds me a bit of the first murder I ever covered as an intern for the Press-Register in college. I showed up at a house where a nephew had shot his uncle to death after they began arguing over how good the biscuits they were eating were.

While there were sheriff’s deputies there, I was feeling very nervous getting out of my car with a family of very disgruntled family members standing nearby. They didn’t look happy to have a reporter there and I was afraid I was about to get beat up.

In any case I was very happy to have Sheriff Tom Purvis invite me into the house to see my first murder victim.

Brown to WPMI

Blake Brown didn’t spend much time off the job after leaving WKRG at the beginning of July. The digital reporter tells me he’s landed at WPMI where he began serving as a multi-media journalist this past Monday.

Brown ended his time with WKRG July 2 where he was a digital journalist.