A few weeks ago, OnMilwaukee.com Managing Editor Bobby Tanzilo and I were paging through our articles editor, the content management system we first built back in 2000 to publish articles, blogs and briefs on our Web site.
We noticed that between current and expired articles, we were closing in on 25,000 total pieces of original content and made a mental note to do something special when we hit that magical number.
Oops.
As of today, there are 20,012 active articles and 5,035 expired articles that have run on OnMilwaukee.com, bringing the total count to 25,047. That came and went rather quickly, didn't it, Bobby?
Admittedly, we wrote articles for the first two years of OnMilwaukee.com's existence, before we launched the CMS around July 11, 2000. But back then we were literally coding the site by hand each day. Not exactly the good old days -- believe me, I remember them well.
I don't know if 25,000 is all that significant a number. Surely, there are publications, some in Milwaukee, that have written more during this 11-year span. And certainly, not all of these pieces, like Aug. 14, 2000's "Short in stature, tall in spirit," an interview with the Nacho Mama's midget Steve Vento -- are true Pulitzer Prize winners.
But others -- most, in fact -- I remain proud of. I can look back at my own work over the years and see how I've grown and evolved as a writer and editor. Some of us, like Bobby, Molly Snyder and my business partner, Jeff Sherman, have been writing for the pages of OnMilwaukee.com for over a decade now.
The weird part? We never run out of stuff to write. Quite the contrary, our to-do list is longer than ever.
I expect the next 25,000 articles to be written a lot more quickly than the first. And as always, thanks for joining us on this ride.
Andy is the president, publisher and founder of OnMilwaukee. He returned to Milwaukee in 1996 after living on the East Coast for nine years, where he wrote for The Dallas Morning News Washington Bureau and worked in the White House Office of Communications. He was also Associate Editor of The GW Hatchet, his college newspaper at The George Washington University.
Before launching OnMilwaukee.com in 1998 at age 23, he worked in public relations for two Milwaukee firms, most of the time daydreaming about starting his own publication.
Hobbies include running when he finds the time, fixing the rust on his '75 MGB, mowing the lawn at his cottage in the Northwoods, and making an annual pilgrimage to Phoenix for Brewers Spring Training.
