Established May 24, 2001, as the online
supplement of the
Desert Journal, a weekly newspaper (1995) with a
4,000-plus readership in Southern New Mexico, Desert Journal Online has
claimed its niche on the World Wide Web. The twice award winning
www.desertjournalonline.com
instantly broke ground in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, if not for the
internet savvy of Victor Arvizu.
Vic was encouraged to move to New
Mexico to open up a computer repair shop and the Desert Journal happened to
have some space available. "I brought VIc in just as he was about to
face a homeless situation," said Desert Journal publisher and founder Bill
Johnson. "We traded services and Vic offered to build our website."
Before the blink of an eye, Vic the web
guru was mentoring Johnson on how to operate and maintain his own site,
Desert Journal Online. News stories and photos suddenly splashed across
DJO's web pages. Headline news like the
Cortez Gas Co. liquid propane
tanks' explosions that decimated surrounding homes and the 224-year prison
sentencing of
David Parker Ray for kidnapping, raping and sexually torturing
three women helped to put DJO on the internet
map.
In the two consecutive years following
its creation, Desert Journal Online won the best website
awards from the New
Mexico Press Association's better newspaper contests for 2002 and 2003. "We
were among the pioneers of early electronic journalism and contributed
greatly to the enthusiasm," said Johnson, a veteran newsman and longtime
photo journalist who now raves in the video world and brings a video
dimension to DJO with that much more enthusiasm.
After nearly eight years of about 400 consecutive
weekly publications of the Desert Journal, numerous trials and tribulations,
Johnson folded the rag in May 2003 but continued to operate Desert Journal
Online. "I needed an outlet for which I could promote and sell the
book that I and the Desert Journal authored and published under the title
Satan's Den Exposed - The David Parker Ray Story," Johnson said. He then
posted his electronic version of the book for
sale on his website and
customers started to trickle in. Eventually he added the print version
published by Ramble House Books.
But that wasn't enough. The Desert
Journal was beginning to lack fresh content and Johnson recognized the need.
"The website was getting more and more traffic and bandwidth usage with the
passage of time and I thought it would be only a matter of time before
things would turn around and spiral downward to stagnation," he said, "But I wouldn't let
that happen."
One day Bill's brother Bert mentioned a
website that was embedding YouTube videos on its pages. "Who tube?" Bill
asked, wondering what the heck his brother was talking about. "YouTube,"
Bert responded and then explained how one could post videos on a user's
channel and then embed the same videos onto one's website. "I always wanted
to do video because broadcast journalism is the education and
training I received in college," said Johnson who instead got caught up in
the print world for a quarter century.
So in late 2007 Johnson began to
integrate his website's pages using the YouTube embedded code to provide
videos for DJO viewers. "It seemed like a major undertaking trying to figure
out the technical glitches, but it really wasn't that difficult either," he
said.
Desert Journal Online has grown to
consist of nearly 300 web pages (URLs), more than 1,500 photographic or
image files (jpegs and gifs) and in recent times a growing selection of
videos. In 2009, DJO continued to break its streak of
traffic records with more than
105,000 unique visitors, 315,000 page views, 4.25 million hits and nearly
100 gigabytes in bandwidth usage. "We're still a small niche in terms
of the size of websites but Desert Journal Online's
profile also is expanding into cyberspace as it now operates five channels on the
www.MicroCandy.com network and a
half dozen channels on www.YouTube.com
.