Opinion : 5 Million.. and counting....

At around 10 a.m. this morning the "total page view" counter passed 5 million. We began Vinton Today believing but not knowing it would succeed, and every day our technology people, our readers, advertisers and contributors of stories and photos (and story ideas) help us continue.

We believe we are the only online-only newspaper in Iowa; the Iowa Newspaper Association told us that we are not eligible for membership because the INA does not consider us a newspaper.

"That is unfortunate for so many reasons," one of our readers told me the other day. We agree.

But it does not matter what outside groups consider us -- we love what we do and we thank you for being part of this magnificent experiment.

It took us about one year and two weeks, beginning March 11, 2010, to get our first million hits, or page views. Now we average about 2.2 million each year. A page view means that someone read a story -- for example 10 page views can mean that 10 people each read one story, or that one person read 10.

Thanks again. We will let you know when we've become the 6 million reader publication!