Blowing By An Unthinkable Milestone: 10,000 Articles And Counting
And just like that, speedonthewater.com founder Matt Trulio zoomed past the website’s 10,000th article like the American Ethanol Mystic Powerboats catamaran blows by the radar gun buoys at 200-plus mph on the Lake of the Ozarks Shootout’s three-quarter-mile course each year. OK so maybe not that fast, but after hitting the mark with his first of three stories on Tuesday morning, Trulio, who was just announced as one of five inductees heading into the 2024 Bob Morgan Memorial Hall of Fame during the Shootout in late August, posted four stories on Wednesday and two more on Thursday.
Matt Trulio, pictured riding in Florida Powerboat Club president Stu Jones’ Top Gun Flight 1130 Cigarette at the 2024 Miami Boat Show Poker Run, has been reporting on Jones and the powerboat community for more than 25 years. Photo by Pete Boden Shoot 2 Thrill Pix
It’s a little embarrassing to admit this—then again speedonthewater.com isn’t the best when it comes to self-promotion—but the last time I officially celebrated a milestone article was for No. 6,000 and that was in 2019. That was in April 2019, and it comes as no surprise that we’ve generated another four thousand stories in five-plus years considering the amount of great news to report since before anyone knew what the word pandemic meant.
The interesting part is that it took us from November 2012 to January 2018—a little more than five years—to jump from 1,000 to 5,000 stories so obviously our article-publishing pace is rather consistent. Again, that’s not surprising given the number of news stories generated from events, offshore races, new products, interesting people and much more.
I’ll leave you with this before we start looking ahead to article No. 11,000 or 20,000 for that matter.
I wrote something back in November 2012 when I celebrated speedonthewater.com’s 1,000th story—almost 90 percent of those had been written by Trulio as I started contributing stories to the website in January of that year. I stated, “Finally, Matt and I owe a huge thank you to our advertisers and readers. Without your support, we wouldn’t even have the opportunity to write these stories. Do you know what the best part is about hitting No. 1,000? The fact that we can look ahead to articles 2,000, 5,000 and more. This is only the beginning for speedonthewater.com as we have some cool things in store for 2013 and beyond.”
I could write the same thing today—multiplying all of those numbers by 10—and I’d again comment about how we have cool things in store for the future and, most importantly, how we have the greatest audience and network of support possible in this industry. While I’m at it, I’ll add in a thank you to the supporting cast of photographers, from Pete Boden and Jeff Helmkamp to Kevin Johns and Tom Leigh, as well as contributing editor Eric Colby, all of whom help propel our website to a higher level.
So my hat’s off to this incredible industry, to our passionate audience and, of course, to Matt Trulio. I wish him safe travels throughout the rest of this week and early next week. And need I say be ready for a barrage of articles from his trips to the Palmetto State and the Show-Me State. He’ll be zooming from event to event and reporting on each of them with consistent speed and efficiency.
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