Today's Front Page |
eJCPress |
Mobile |
Facebook |
Twitter |
Coupons |
‘Nobama’ story overloads Press site
By Brian BishopPress Staff Writer
bbishop@johnsoncitypress.comIf you had trouble accessing JohnsonCityPress.com on Monday, you weren’t alone.
Printer-friendly version
Email ArticleHeavy traffic volume generated by links on national Web sites to a Johnson City Press article about a vendor’s eviction from The Mall at Johnson City caused JohnsonCityPress.com to bog down through most of the day, making it difficult for visitors to connect.
Press Staff writer Brad Hicks wrote the story about the plight of Dan Fuchs, owner of a small printing company called the Graphic edge, which specializes in novelty items like bumper stickers, coffee mugs and T-shirts.
The number one seller for Fuchs was anti-Barack Obama merchandise, which accounted for over half of his merchandise. Fuchs was seeing an increase in business at his kiosk when The Mall gave him an eviction notice last Friday.
Fuchs said he was given no reason for this termination and was shocked and upset. Thursday evening, Fuchs said mall officials met with him and told him to take down the anti-Obama items on display by closing time or face immediate eviction.
“I was upset about it, of course,” he said Friday prior to receiving the notice. “That’s my livelihood.”
Now it appears Fuchs is out of business at the mall, but mall officials say this decision was not based upon political views.
Friday afternoon, Fuchs was handed a lease termination notice by mall officials and signed by Mall General Manager Tembra Aldridge. The letter stated that the option to terminate the lease agreement was effective 11:59 p.m. Friday and that he must vacate the mall premises and remove his property before then.
Marsha Hammond, the mall’s marketing director, has a different take on that meeting. She said that Aldridge and Melinda Davis, the mall’s specialty leasing representative, suggested that Fuchs also display items in support of Obama. The mall had received several complaints from customers regarding the anti-Obama items, she said. Hammond also said that it was Fuchs’ decision to remove the items completely from display.
“That is not true,” Fuchs said. “I was given no choice. I was given, (Thursday) night at about 4:30, the option of taking it down or get out, receive an eviction at closing time.”
Fuchs said that while he never anticipated any, he was aware of customer complaints prior to Thursday’s meeting. Hammond said, and Fuchs confirmed, that several weeks prior to Thursday’s meeting, Davis came by the kiosk to suggest Fuchs display pro-Obama items that would allow him to continue to display anti-Obama items. Friday, prior to receiving the termination notice, Fuchs said he would comply with this suggestion.
The anti-Obama merchandise sold at the kiosk is not necessarily his viewpoint, Fuchs said. He again said most were completed upon customer request and were displayed as work samples.
“I support his office,” he said “I might not like him, but I support his office.”
When the article ran on JohnsonCityPress.com, it was picked up by the well-known Web site drudgereport.com. The resulting Web hits have climbed to levels nobody could have predicted, causing a crash in the newspaper Web site.
“They link straight back to that story on our Web site, that has caused our servers to get vastly overloaded,” Press Information Technology Director Alan Broyles said. “We received over 40-thousand unique visits and over 50-thousand page views from the time Drudge posted the link around 9:10 Monday morning through 5:15 Monday afternoon.”
The real numbers of Web visitors cannot be estimated because the server overload leaves many of those trying to view the article unable to access the site.
“We apologize for any inconvenience to our regular Web visitors and to those who are interested in this story and that’s about all we can do at this point,” Broyles said. “We only have a certain amount of resources at our disposal and at one point today we were getting roughly 5,500 hits per hour. We are making every effort possible to keep things working on our end.”
The server overload has affected some internal capabilities of the Press Web team as well, hampering daily operations.
“This has also impacted our ability to update the site with fresh news items throughout the day,” Internet and Special Projects Editor Sam Watson said. “We hope the situation will resolve itself soon and allow regular visitors to continue accessing JohnsonCityPress.com for breaking news and other articles as they normally would.”
Web hits continue to climb on JohnsonCityPress.com. There were 55,000 unique visits recorded by 9:15 Monday night which is five times the normal daily traffic for the site and that number does not indicate potential visitors who could not access the site due to the increased traffic.