D e s e r t E x p o s u r e 
January
2008
Desert Exposure, Version 2008
Tooting the horn for a new DesertExposure.com with the new year.
The new year brings exciting news for Desert Exposure, but to see what we mean you'll have to boot up your computer. Beginning with the online edition of our January issue and rolling out over the next few months, we'll be introducing some innovative improvements in our DesertExposure.com Web site at www.desertexposure.com You might think of it as DesertExposure.com version 2.0.
We launched the online edition of Desert Exposure with the January 2005 issue — a lifetime ago, in the fast-changing world of the Web. Since then, it's been gratifying to hear from readers across the country who've paid virtual visits to Southwest New Mexico via our site, often in preparation for in-person trips (or moving here permanently). Readers in our own region have also told us how much they enjoy being able to read an issue online when they've missed the print edition, or to refer to an old article when they've recycled the paper copy. The ability to search past issues back to January 2005 has also eliminated that nagging "What issue was that in?" feeling. With three years' worth of Desert Exposures now online, we figure that we've posted something over a million words' worth of good reading to date.
Increasingly, too, we realize that more and more folks simply prefer to get their news, information and entertainment on a computer screen instead of in the form of ink on dead trees. Not to sound like old fogeys, but it does seem that youngsters out there — the next generation of Desert Exposure readers, we like to think — are more attuned to pixels than print. We think of our own daughter, fingers flying over the keyboard, pulling answers out of the Internet instead of turning to printed newspapers or magazines. Heck, it's not just "young-uns": We make a habit of checking the New York Times online every day (especially handy here in Silver City, where only the Sunday print edition can be delivered to our high-desert doorstep), and get email news alerts from the Times as well as the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal.
No wonder, then, that traffic to our Web site keeps growing as users keep clicking. In 2007 alone, the number of monthly unique visitors to DesertExposure.com nearly doubled, from about 5,800 the first couple months of the year to an average of 10,000 per month for October through December. (Note that we're talking about unduplicated visitors — not even counting return visits from regular online readers — and not about "hits," an often-bandied-about Web statistic that's pretty much meaningless. Every file, every piece of artwork on a page that gets transmitted to a user's computer counts as a "hit," so one view of one page might generate 40 hits.) Combined with the 27,000-some readers who regularly consume our print edition, that means we're closing in on 40,000 people who enjoy Desert Exposure each month in one form or the other.
But we're not resting on our virtual laurels — DesertExposure.com is evolving to keep up with the expanding needs of our audience. As 2008 unfolds, you'll be seeing a new, more information-packed home page at www.desertexposure.com updated throughout the month with tips, behind-the-scenes news and the latest area events. We've already completely updated the online versions of our gallery guide and Red or Green? dining guide; even in months when the printed restaurant listings get abbreviated, you can always find the complete, up-to-date listings with capsule reviews online. Next, look for improvements to the electronic version of our popular "40 Days and 40 Nights" events calendar, to make it more current and even easier to access.
We'll also be making our online articles easier to read. Since Desert Exposure tends to cover topics more in-depth than your typical daily newspaper, our stories can sometimes require a lot of scrolling. In DesertExposure.com version 2.0, long articles will be broken into more manageable pages, to give your mouse's scroll wheel a rest.
Perhaps the most important change — which you'll notice immediately at www.desertexposure.com — involves the folks who make Desert Exposure possible each month: our advertisers. In what's certainly a first in our coverage area and a breakthrough that frankly we've never seen before online, all of our display print advertisers will now also be represented in our Web edition. And, no, we're not charging extra to put an ad online as well as on paper — it's simply included as part of the deal when you buy an ad in Desert Exposure.
The only real difference between ad placement in our print and online editions is that we're taking advantage of the power of the electronic medium to randomly rotate ads throughout our entire site. So if you click on this column two different times online, you're likely to see two different sets of ads. Moreover, in a nifty bit of time travel, this month's ads will pop up when you view pages from back issues going back over the past three years. If you want information on a particular advertiser and don't happen upon the right randomly placed ad, you can also go straight to a new ad index, which will include links to advertisers' own sites or emails. Clicking on any ad will also take you directly to this handy index.
Did I already mention that we're not charging advertisers extra for placement online?
It's worth adding here that we're also not charging readers to view any part of our Web site, or to search our archives back to January 2005. Nor do you have to register or login or give us any personal information. The Las Cruces and Silver City Sun-News sites charge $2.95 to read a single archived article. A subscription to the Silver City Daily Press' electronic edition — necessary to see more than a couple of current stories — costs $104 a year. Access to the online edition of the Albuquerque Journal costs $80 a year if you're not a print subscriber. Of course, daily newspapers have overhead and expenses that Desert Exposure isn't saddled with, and we certainly value these sites — even though we have to pay for them. We think it's nice, though, that DesertExposure.com readers can enjoy every page of our Web site for free and without any login or password hassles.
Judging by the burgeoning traffic on our site, our users apparently agree.
Fans of the "dead-tree" edition of Desert Exposure shouldn't fret, however, that we'll be going digital-only any time soon. We're big fans of the print medium, having worked in ink-on-paper for more years than we care to count. There's nothing quite like opening the freshly printed pages of a new issue, hot off the presses, and seeing a month's worth of labors made real for thousands of readers. We even love the inky smell that pervades our cars when we're out delivering. (The electronic edition does have the advantage, however, of not requiring a stint in the hot tub after delivering it — bits and bytes are definitely easier on the back.)