thebatavian

Many readers probably remember that about three months ago I had surgery for a detached retina. I was unable to work for three weeks.

That surgery went well and I seem to have healed fine. Now it's time to have the silicon oil put in my eye to hold the retina in place while it healed removed. That surgery is this morning.

This time, the doctor says I can't work for a week.

At least, if all goes well, when it's over, my vision should be back to where it was.

We have our great freelancers to help with coverage, and Billie, of course, and our news partnerships with WBTA and 13WHAM to help out, so we should be fine, but that's why I won't be doing much over the next week.

This is our new bumper sticker. If you would like one, they're free, but we do need a self-addressed, stamped envelope to send it to you.

Mail your envelope to The Batavian, 200 E. Main St., #5, Batavia, NY 14020.

If you are a local business owner and would like a few of these bumper stickers to hand out to your customers, e-mail howard@thebatavian.com.

We had a database error this morning and had to restore the site from a backup.

The good news is, we had a very recent backup available, 3 a.m. The bad news is, we still lost a couple of posts.

One was from Steve Ognibene about Batavia's boys and girls track teams winning Section V titles. Steve isn't available until tonight to repost it. Our apologies.

The other post was an accident on the Thruway and we can't recreate that post.

I don't think any user comments were lost.

For at least two weeks, I'm going to be unable to do much work.

Friday morning I was diagnosed with a detached retina in my right eye. I'm having surgery this morning. I get to spend the next week in a constant facedown position. It will be at least two, possibly three, weeks before I can return to work.

Billie is going to step up and provide more news coverage. Our corps of freelance contributors are also ready to pitch in, as is our news partner WBTA.

You can help, too: If you there is something going on you think others in the community will be interested in knowing about, email photos and information to billie@thebatavian.com.

Anything related to advertising support, contact Lisa Ace at lisa@thebatavian.com.

I'll have access to e-mail. I'll forward anything work related to Billie or Lisa.

As for me, I'll be fine. It's not going to be fun, but I get to catch up on all the movies and documentaries on Netflix that I never have time to watch. There's also the NCAA tournament starting, which I usually can only watch portions of here and there.

This morning I'm flying to New York City to attend a couple of days of a conference on local publishing that is focused on revenue ideas. It's kind of a big deal conference that the organizer tries to talk me into attending every year, so I thought I'd take a bite of the apple this year and see what I might learn.

As always, we've made arrangements to ensure there is still local news coverage while I'm away.

There's also this: One thing I've been focused on recently is how to improve the business of The Batavian, and one key to any improvement in anything is greater knowledge and insight. Last week we posted a link to a survey about digital subscriptions and the feedback prompted a new set of questions I wish I'd asked then. So, I've created a new survey to ask those questions.

Please help me get smarter by responding to the survey now. Click here.

For what it's worth, much of my curiosity on this topic is driven by trends and commentary I see going on in the news industry, so I wonder what I can learn from our own audience and how that might apply to the local news industry as a whole. So please take the survey.

You know us over here at The Batavian, we're always willing to experiment.

There's been a few publications recently, such as Wired Magazine, that are offering versions of their online editions without ads, or with fewer ads, to paid subscribers.

We thought we would give that idea a try.  

Here is a version of The Batavian without ads for you to try.

You can take this survey and let us know what you think.

If you have any questions, you can e-mail me at howard@thebatavian.com. Also, let me know if you run into any technical glitches.

Anticipating one question I know the will come up: The main site, The Batavian, will remain sponsor supported and free.  

A while back, the app for The Batavian stopped updating correctly and I couldn't figure out why.

Without any intervention on my part, it's started working correctly again.

We've updated it to include not just the home page headlines but also obituaries and postings from Batavia's List.

We'll start using it again to send out push notifications for local breaking news.

To download your app, if you haven't already (and more than 600 people have): Droid | iPhone

Last night, our database crashed. All of the posts from yesterday were lost.

Thankfully, Google has saved copies (called a cache) and I should be able to restore everything. I'm starting that work now. I'll time stamp everything to yesterday's time of publication, so this post will remain at the top of the page through that process.

UPDATE 9 a.m.: Yesterday's posts are restored, but I couldn't get to comments, so the few comments left yesterday are lost. Sorry. Also, there was a non-injury rollover accident in Oakfield around 3 a.m. We weren't able to post about it because the site was down at that time.

Most viewed posts for 2015:

• 'I just got lucky': Byron man bags 500-pound black bear, by Ray Coniglio
• Person reportedly shot at residence in Town of Le Roy
• DEVELOPING: Feds raid residence on Batavia-Oakfield Townline Road
• Skunk loitering at front door of business on Liberty Street
• Driver in fatal accident in Bethany charged with manslaughter
• A father loses his best friend
• Batavia prom queen gives her crown to a special classmate, by Traci Turner​
• Victim of accident in Bethany succumbs to injuries
• Liberty Street resident accused of murdering infant

The bear story also became the most viewed story in the history of The Batavian.

We served up 9.4 million page views in 2015 across 5.86 million user sessions (site visits). 

As a guest of the New York Farm Bureau, I will be in Waterloo for the next two days to attend the Farm and Food Experience, a symposium for journalists on the agriculture industry. I was thrilled to be invited to attend. It's a great opportunity to learn more about farming.

Naturally, news coverage will be more limited while I'm away, but will continue.

I'm long overdue for taking care of this -- we promised to give away an iPad Mini to one lucky poster during the first month of our newest Web site, Batavia's List.

The winner is Mike McDonald. Mike increased his odds during the month-long contest by posting three home rental ads.

Since he already owns a tablet, he's donating his prize to John Kennedy School so it might go to a student who can't afford such a device.

We have a new contest: Post something to the marketplace on Batavia's List between now and Nov. 10 and win a $100 gift certificate to Larry's Steakhouse.  No purchase necessary. To post for free e-mail howard@thebatavian.com for a coupon code for a free post.

We're also now running our community calendar through Batavia's List. Post your events on our calendar and they appear on both sites. You must register for Batavia's List to post calendar items. Once you do, and you're logged in, you will see a button for posting events on the Calendar Page.

If you're on Facebook, you can get updates of postings to Batavia's List by liking Batavia's List on Facebook. 

Finally, please be sure to sign up for our new daily e-mail newsletter. 

We're ending this little experiment we called The Batavian Club. It's a lot of work that we're always behind on for too little return. That's the bad news.

The good news is, we're still going to offer the same fantastic deals with local businesses in special gift certificate packages.

Essentially, it's The Batavian Club without calling it a club. The big difference on our end is we save the work on tracking members and printing membership cards, which always seemed to bog us down and create a lot of unnecessary expense. We will be able to send out money-saving gift certificates much sooner after an order is placed when we don't have to make batches of individual membership cards. 

For local businesses, it's the same great promotion as before. There's no additional expense beyond honoring the gift cards when customers come in. If your business is not already participating, call me at (585) 250-4118.

For those who had recurring payments set up in PayPal, I just canceled all of those so there will be no future payments from your account. There are three people who have joined since we last sent out membership packages. They will get a refund. For all other members, they should be up-to-date with membership cards and gift certificates and the stated expiration dates still apply.

Visit Batavia's List and post your ad today!

Also: Sign up for our new daily e-mail newsletter. Get the day's headlines plus the latest marketplace posts delivered to your inbox every day at 5 p.m.

And: Like Batavia's List on Facebook.

Visit Batavia's List and post your ad today!

Also: Sign up for our new daily e-mail newsletter. Get the day's headlines plus the latest marketplace posts delivered to your inbox every day at 5 p.m.

And: Like Batavia's List on Facebook.

Visit Batavia's List and post your ad today!

Also: Sign up for our new daily e-mail newsletter. Get the day's headlines plus the latest marketplace posts delivered to your inbox every day at 5 p.m.

And: Like Batavia's List on Facebook.

Visit Batavia's List and post your ad today!

Also: Sign up for our new daily e-mail newsletter. Get the day's headlines plus the latest marketplace posts delivered to your inbox every day at 5 p.m.

And: Like Batavia's List on Facebook.

Visit Batavia's List and post your ad today!

Also: Sign up for our new daily e-mail newsletter. Get the day's headlines plus the latest marketplace posts delivered to your inbox every day at 5 p.m.

And: Like Batavia's List on Facebook.

Visit Batavia's List and post your ad today!

Also: Sign up for our new daily e-mail newsletter. Get the day's headlines plus the latest marketplace posts delivered to your inbox every day at 5 p.m.

And: Like Batavia's List on Facebook.

Finally, we have an e-mail newsletter we can send you.

We will deliver the newsletter every day at 5 p.m. It will contain the top stories of the previous 24 hours or so, plus the latest marketplace posts from Batavia's List.

To sign up, click here.

Don't forget: Post your ad on Batavia's List for a chance to win an iPad Mini. No purchase necessary; e-mail howard@thebatavian.com for a coupon code for a free post.