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NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- Mayor Adam Barringer stood tall in Tuesday night's City Commission meeting as he read aloud a proclamation declaring July 31, 2012, "Peter Mallory Day" in New Smyrna Beach.
As I stood next to the mayor, I felt a range of emotions: Sadness because Peter has passed on. But also happiness because Peter was recognized for his contributions to the city by the sea that he dearly loved and called home most of his life.
And I was proud, because the municipality's proclamation recognized the 24/7 Internet newspaper, NSBNews.net, that Peter and I co-founded and launched April 7, 2008. Peter retired in March as his health deteriorated with the intention of continuing his award-winning weekly blog, "The Right Side."
This proclamation from the city was the third for Peter since his passing on June 28. Earlier this month, a proclamations recognizing Peter's contributions were issued by the Volusia County Council and by State Rep. Dorothy Hukill in Peter's memory. I am awaiting similar proclamations from Gov. Rick Scott and Congresswoman Sandy Adams.
Peter was excited to see our little enterprise rapidly grow in readership and advertising to the point where we stretched our daily coverage beyond greater New Smyrna Beach to Volusia County and Central Florida. And with that came a new umbrella trade-marked name, Headline Surfer accessed via HeadlineSurfer.com (with NSBNews.net and its alternate domain, VolusiaNews.net, continuing as access points).
Peter was a family man, a business entrepreneur who was well educated with bachelors and masters degrees from MIT. He was a New Smyrna Beach High graduate and a proud Cuda. He had served on the board of trustees for Daytona State College and the Utilities Commission of New Smyrna Beach.
In recent years, Peter called the Sugar Mill Country Club home. Just up the road from me. After the death of his civic-minded wife, Jackie, Peter found companionship with another Cudas alumnus, Sandy Roberts. He loved to talk about economics and history.
Peter relished sharing his conservative political views with anyone who would listen and even those who preferred that he didn't. Ronald Reagan was his favorite president and he enjoyed friendships with former Gov. Jeb Bush, former Florida House speaker and Congressman Tom Feeney and Hukill.
All Peter ever wanted to do was write his own column on his own terms, free of the bias of the liberal media. Peter was a frequent letter writer to the former New Smyrna Beach Observer, the Daytona Beach News-Journal and the Orlando Sentinel. And he enjoyed reading the Wall Street Journal, People magazine and Reader's Digest.
I met Peter in January 2007, after a nearly decade run as an award-winning reporter with the News-Journal and as a city editor for a small daily in Massachusetts. I had just been hired as editor of the then-daily New Smyrna Beach Observer. I wanted to include community columnists and I was impressed by a series of "letters to the editor" that Peter had written that went unpublished. I asked him if he stop by because I wanted to meet him. Soon thereafter, he anchored the Saturday opinion page.
My job lasted seven months when the paper was converted to a weekly and folded several months later. Peter and I continued our friendship. When I left the Observer, he stopped writing for it as did several other community columnists I had recruited.
I went to work for the Palatka Daily News as its city hall reporter. The pay wasn't very good and the commute was 90 minutes. So I left it after several months.
I told Peter of my dream to start up 24/7 Internet newspaper, something that had not been done before in Florida. I made it clear to him this was cost prohibitive, but he knew from my experience as a reporter and my drive that such a feat could be accomplished. So with his financial backing and my drive, the dream became a reality.
The other original columnists came on board and a couple months later, we launched NSBNews.net on April 7, 2008, with a focus on New Smyrna Beach, Edgewater and Oak Hill. Two months later, the News-Journal closed its Canal Street bureau and the Observer folded.
By that fall, the Observer name was purchased Robert Lott, a financial planner and immediate past president of the chamber. Suffice to say, we ran into a firestorm with Lott and his associates, but Peter and I persevered.
We developed an advertising base with Bill Roe and his Ocean Properties, Clancy's Cantina and Norwoods Restaurant as anchors and went about the business of generating revenue and further developing our editorial platform with an emphasis on video coverage.
Our stories, blogs and images are carried by Google News Directories around the clock and placed high in the search engines. To date, we have amassed 1.18 million unique visits and 2.15 million page views. We enjoy strong readership globally, with strong interest in Canada, Great Britain, Germany and Australia. We have daily readership in all 50 states and 285 communities across Florida.
And while our strongest day-to-day readership is in greater New Smyrna Beach (Edgewater, Oak Hill) Port Orange and Daytona Beach, we have readers from greater Orlando, Palm Coast and Titusville. Our fastest growing areas are in Deltona, Sanford and Lake Mary.
Our database is huge with more than 9,000 pages. We've generated 15,000 stories and blogs, 2,000 original videos and close to 20,000 photos and graphics. We have video news constantly streaming through the AP, and Google links to communities in all 67 Florida counties.
Earlier this month, we held eight public candidate debates and we are the dominant market in the county for political campaign advertising. We got an exclusive interview early on with Trayvon Martin's parents in Miami and we have been in the courtroom for all of the George Zimmerman appearances.
None of this Internet newspaper success enjoyed today would be possible without Peter Mallory. He got to write his column after all, even winning a Florida Press Club Award last year for "Blog writing." Peter made the most of his 77 years. He lives on in our hearts and memories.