LakeWalesNews.Net Readership Views Surge to 20,000 Weekly

New features and sections added to LakeWalesNews.Net have driven skyrocketing readership since September 1, reaching well over 80,000 page views during the first month, according to statistics captured by Internet analytics. New Day Market Research acquired the online newspaper on that date and has since significantly enhanced the publication's reach and interest.

"We are extremely pleased by the community reaction to our added features like the graphic Community Calendar," said City Editor Tom Paulson. "That new feature alone has drawn more than 7,000 views in four weeks."

Other new features, including increased sports coverage and a popular "Nature of Florida" segment that highlights area wildlife and environmental stories have also contributed to sharply rising traffic to the site, which is focused tightly on news of the southeast Polk region around Lake Wales. Management attributed some of the growing readership simply to growth in the community.

"Previous top months for the paper were around 45,000 page views, so we hit about 180 percent of average readership in our first month of operations," Paulson said. "October is even busier so far. People obviously remain intensely interested in what's happening in their neighborhood, their school, their city."

The publication is dated weekly but new stories appear more often on a daily basis. "I'd like to personally thank all our readers for helping us keep a local voice, a local new medium that really covers Lake Wales," said managing editor Robert Connors. "I've been around Lake Wales for more than six decades so I have a sense of what the community wants. We will continue to focus on the stories that affect us all. It's the only way that Lake Waleans can keep up with what's happening in our community,"

LakeWalesNews.Net was established in 2019, more than two years after the closure of the city's last printed newspaper. Lake Wales was once served by both daily and a weekly print newspapers, a rarity for a small town. The Daily Highlander ceased publication in 1995, and the weekly newspaper prior to 2018.