'Hyper-local' BHP exceeds early expectations
By SUSAN LEATHERS & KELLY GILFILLAN
Brentwood Home Page
Second anniversaries are usually so, well, secondary. But today is Brentwood Home Page’s second anniversary and we are celebrating as though it’s our first. Truth be told, we were working so hard a year ago we woke up on Sept. 3 and told ourselves, “We missed our anniversary.”

We’re still working just as hard – harder actually – but this year we couldn’t let the occasion go by without marking it, and extending a huge thank you to our readers, advertisers, sources, columnists, freelancers, sales staff, advisors and friends who have helped us move from a start up to a bona fide business in two years.

First an official BHP update.

Numbers help tell the story
This is the 6290^th story created for Brentwood Home Page.  That number includes staff-written stories, our weekly Crime Reports, breaking news, and weekly columns by the most talented – and educated -- stable of local columnists in Middle Tennessee. (Can any other local paper boast a medical doctor, a PhD and a doctor of divinity among their ranks?) As a hyper-local online newspaper, we don’t have an Associated Press or New York Times News Service to back us up. If it’s not local, it’s not in BHP.

Since our official launch on Sept. 1, 2009, BHP has had 2.7 million page views, 1.15 million visits and 318,580 unique visitors, according to Google Analytics.

We have become THE leading source of breaking news and big news and fun news in and about the Brentwood community. We realized how big a community BHP had created when retired and beloved Brentwood High School teacher Sarah Bayrd was tragically killed in Italy last October.  Over 6,000 people learned the details of the accident and read the tributes to her life on our website. We also were the only news source that had coverage of the DUI accident that left a Brentwood mom paralyzed last September. We followed the story  through the court system and a conviction in the case earlier last month.

School, sports interest high
Though we are not staffed to cover the Williamson County Schools board of education or county commission, we made it a priority to cover last year’s WCS rezoning and budget process as fairly and thoroughly as we could. We were the first to offer an “inside view” of the new Marcella Vivrette Smith Park property and have missed only one City Commission meeting in two years.

School news and prep sports are among our most popular features, and high school football is one of our favorite things to cover. This fall we’ve added to our sports freelancer ranks to offer readers the most comprehensive coverage of the Brentwood Bruins, Ravenwood Raptors and Brentwood Academy Eagles found anywhere.  Our Spring Fling coverage of Brentwood teams and individual competition was unequaled.

In our second year, BHP launched its weekly Real Estate section and Home Page Picks, a new group coupon promotion. We’ve partnered with NewsChannel 5 to expand our Brentwood weather coverage and added an interactive crime map and real-time traffic cams that came in very handy during last winter’s snow storms and May’s flash floods.

New columns added to the mix include Jodi Rall’s Inside the Bubble, Amy Freese’s DesignHer Living and Mila Grigg’s Looking Your Best in our Lifestyles section. The Saucy Sisters’ Lift Your Spirits column has brought new life to Food and Drink. A Letters to the Editor section has been added in News.

See you at the library
Since April, Brentwood Home Page has partnered with the Brentwood Library to sponsor BHP Night at the Library. The free programs feature a newsmaker or program of local interest on the fourth Tuesday of every month.

If we were forced to list a disappointment over the first two years of our existence, it would have to be the 2011 Municipal Election. Despite extensive coverage and information on the candidates, the issues, the debates and the polling places, turnout in the May election remained dismal.

Another election-related disappointment came when the first columnist we engaged for our 2009 launch, Jill Burgin, announced she was considering a run for Brentwood City Commission. Once she formally declared, she had to stop writing her Joyride column. On the flip side, the city has a great new leader and BHP found another great commentator on local issues in Bob McKinney.

BHP needs your help to grow
How can you help? We know there are thousands of Brentwood-area residents and workers who still don’t know about Brentwood Home Page. If it has become essential to you, please send an email to your friends, family members, neighbors and co-workers to tell them about Brentwood Home Page and to ask them to log on to www.brentwoodhomepage.com to check it out for themselves. Encourage them to sign up for our free daily newsletter and to LIKE us on Facebook.

If you belong to an HOA board, please make sure a link to Brentwood Home Page is on your neighborhood’s website and bulletin board. Share stories and columns with others you think would enjoy them.

And most of all, please support our advertisers, who make it possible for us to provide BHP at no cost to our readers. Tell them you saw their ad on BHP and do business with them. They will appreciate it and so will we.

If you have a story idea, feedback or concern about Brentwood Home Page as it begins the next year of its life, don’t hesitate to contact us at news@brentwoodhomepage.com.

Susan Leathers and Kelly Gilfillan are owners and founders of Brentwood Home Page. Contact them at susan@brentwoodhomepage and Kelly@brentwoodhomepage. Correspondence can be mailed to Brentwood Home Page, P.O. Box 3704, Brentwood, TN 37024-3704.