Ok, so maybe it was on June 3rd., but much like how I suspect The Bench Wire’s legacy will go, it was more or less forgotten.
Personally, I’ve had a great year churning out stories, opinions and what not out into the void in hopes of maybe getting a few people to look at our little dome through a different kind of lens. The Bench Wire.com is currently, modestly, averaging a little over 1,900 sessions a week and growing thanks to our Facebook page. Our FB page now has over 24,000 likes and I can confidently say that our platform, together, can begin rivaling…well, anyone local. I believe we have significantly better content than Men’s Rio, Festiva, Valley Delta, Socialife, 9 to 5 Guy, Conzepto and any other local magazine, blog, news-wire hub, whatever. (Sorry, not sorry?)
Hell, after our Noe Reyes piece, even The Monitor came calling to see just what in the hell was going on in our tiny corner of the internet.
Earlier this year, JC left The Bench Wire to pursue other ventures. I’d like to take time now to thank JC for all that he had done while at The Bench Wire and wish him well.
A year ago, I wrote that The Bench Wire.com was born out of necessity. I wrote that the New York Times and Gawker writers don’t relate to anyone outside of the New York metro area and that our local magazines and papers have the journalistic teeth of a “Barbara Walters gummer with a dental dam.” I wrote that if a major news story happened in the RGV, you should expect an unrelenting amount of what Stephen Colbert so eloquently called “truthiness” from us.
I’m proud to say all of that is still true today. I have yet to take a single dollar in ad money and pride myself in self-funding a site that many people can legitimately relate to. It’s been a great first year and I have no one to thank more than our readers. The lovers, the haters, to all of you: Thanks for reading.
The State of The Bench Wire is good.
-JD
Founder & Editor-in-Chief
