Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch had what eventually became an annoying habit of greeting people by twisting a traditional line into the more self-serving "How'm I doing?"
The political value of the simple turn of a phrase was phenomenal. With that one-liner, Koch became a man of the people, one of those rare politicians viewed as responsive to the people.
It's the kind of line anyone in the business of serving the public should use and one we've asked frequently since we launched the new DailyGazette.com over the past seven months. It's one I personally ask just about anyone I talk to who has viewed the Web site since it came to life on Dec. 11.
So now, I throw it open to everyone. How are we doing?
Yes, we can make some assumptions from the numbers we get each day on what pages visitors are viewing (without giving away our numbers, let me say it's safe to assume that crime does pay). And we also can draw some conclusions from the thousands of comments we've received since going live (especially the dozens who have complained about the lack of obituaries on the Web site).
But I'm really interested in hearing more. What do you especially like about the site? What do you think we should change or add or get rid of? Do you like the recent addition of multimedia content, especially reporter-generated video? How about the ability to access entire documents that allow you to learn even more than you would be able to in a traditional newspaper story?
The idea when we launched this new site was for it to be responsive to its viewers, so give me something to respond to. I'll tell you what; I'll even throw in a signed 8-by-10 photo of Carl Strock for one lucky commenter.
What more could you ask for?