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A Review of 2007 and a Look Back
December
30, 2007 — There is a tradition in the news business to take a look back
at the expiring year.
PolyArts in September, 2003 was the first photo feature HopNews offered. There is no log of how many people saw that group of photos, but we do recall a watershed event three months later, when over 100 visits were had following "Mary Harrington Night" at Hopkinton Country Club. Mary must have a large family, someone remarked.
At that time, HopNews had an Artists' page, featuring exclusively
Hopkinton artists, who had proven themselves with a
Cartoonist Ashley Jackson was just 19 when he started contributing to the works of this writer, with his skillful, stylistic labor of love, something he has been doing since he was five years-old. During 2004, former Selectman Dick Gooding contributed several articles explaining the process of developing a Town Charter. The Charter Commission began meeting in June, 2004, the process culminating in the hiring of a Town Manager, who started on January 1, 2007. When the process was completed, Mr. Jackson, with his special abilities, memorialized the members in much of the same the way the signers of the Constitution are thought of.
HopNews Cartoon by Ashley T.M. Jackson
Although HopNews started archiving content in February of 2005, our
statistics archivist, third-party vendor, Sitemeter.com, has been storing
the visit counts nearly since we started. December, 2003 saw 1,113
visits. The next year increased by ten-fold, and the year after doubled,
as did the year after that. The millionth HopNews visit was
On February 10, 2005, HopNews broke the story of the offering for sale
of much of Weston Nurseries' land. Other news organizations followed,
and as many residents know, a
two year process of
Two days after that scoop, St. John's treated their volunteers to an Appreciation Dinner with entertainment provided by three very talented members of the community. Click on the video icon to see the exciting performance captured by HopNews video at St. John's Parish Center on that evening. HopNews added extensive content and resources in 2005, and covered as many meetings and events as possible such as the HEF Gala, the HCE Telethon, Memorial Day and Veteran's Day, Little League First Day, High School graduation, sporting events and meetings of Boards and Committees. HopNews was pretty much a Hopkinton secret until December 15, 2005, when Lisa Kocian, correspondent for the Boston Globe West wrote a feature story about "Citizen News" and largely featured HopNews as well as this writer in the piece. Our counter took an enormous spike in readership that day from the awesome power of the Boston Globe to reach readers — and that was only the West Edition!
HopNews had the entire news conference online before the television stations, who did not come equipped for live broadcast. HopNews would scoop the Boston television stations on events following, who would then check HopNews daily. And as a result of that earned credibility, HopNews has become the first place all news organizations go to for the story about Hopkinton.
British media picked up the story, drawing parallels between it and the
story of a British nanny, and started a media frenzy. During this
frenzy, HopNews entertained visits from media representatives from
Boston, across the country, and from Britain. This writer appeared on
Channel 4, Fox, CNN's Anderson Cooper, and Geraldo at Large, just to say that
we didn't know them — they had been in town barely ten days. Mr. Entwistle was subsequently arrested by Hopkinton Police and charged with
murdering his family after a transcontinental flight at Hanscom Field,
and a O.J. Simpson-like helicopter convoy from there to the Hopkinton
Police Headquarters. He now sits in Middlesex County Courthouse jail
awaiting trial. The throng of media that had gathered in Hopkinton
followed Mr. Entwistle from the
On March 24, 2006, the
Hopkinton Police Dispatcher radioed that an intruder had entered the
High School with a bat and a chain. The breaking of glass in the
background could be heard on the police radio on the way to the scene as
Officer Buckley, who had already arrived, described events. A nineteen
year-old Hopkinton resident was placed into custody, and HopNews had a
video of the dramatic rescue of the young man from the roof peak of the
High School by Hopkinton Police Officer Philip Powers. It was a video no
one On March 26, 2006, the lives of two beautiful children. Andrea and Joshua Goncalves were taken in a horrific high speed car crash on Frankland Road that nearly broke the vehicle in two. The community came together in various ways in the schools and in the churches seeking self-healing. The Hopkinton Police would be involved in yet another major event within days. On April 15, State Police requested the assistance of Hopkinton Police with "A man with a gun on Route 495." State Police Trooper Phil Dowd had stopped a 21 year-old from New Jersey who failed to comply with the Trooper's orders after the Trooper allegedly observed a gun in the man's belt. A State Police crisis team arrived, including negotiators, canines and the STOP team (Photo of team arriving), who eventually took the young man down with less than lethal force, a projectile bean bag in the crotch. All of the Boston stations used the HopNews video, which caught the entire textbook police action on tape. Fast forward to 2007, and below are the Editor's favorite photographic picks from June 2007 to December 2007. Click on a thumbnail to see a larger photo:
TO SEE HOPNEWS ARCHIVES ANYTIME 24/7, CHOOSE THE GREEN ARCHIVES AT THE TOP OF PAGE ONE. |
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else could have been expected to see, until the Boston Television
helicopters arrived and caught the tail end, letting the proverbial cat
out of the bag. By the time this writer got back to the office, the
calls from other news media started coming in. The HopNews video aired
on all Boston Television stations. It did not end there.
