Kimberly Young

The Internet rocks! And if you don’t believe my best imitation of a 15-year-old web wonder, then look at this growth pattern. In April, www.InsuranceJournal.com recorded 471,664 hits. By May the number hit 995,758 and in June it surpassed 1 million hits, clocking in a record 1,089,028. Not even in my wildest dreams did I imagine passing up the 1 million mark two months after our web site relaunched.

The Internet has allowed the Insurance Journal team to do what it could only dream longingly about a decade ago—get the news out as it happens.

For centuries, magazines have dealt with timeliness issues. While the medium is perfect for offering in-depth substantive articles, it takes time. No matter how much time and care you put into an article, anything can change while the printer is inking, folding, trimming, shipping and delivering. You try your best to account for the unaccountable and then cross your fingers.

I must admit that I’ve been jealous of newspapers. They were able to report on news each day, scooping any kind of industry advantage I might have had. My newspaper friends feel the same way about CNN and Headline News. They get scooped in their own backyard all the time.

But the Internet, ahhh the sweet Internet, makes us all equals. I can have a story up on our site within three minutes. No inking, drying, folding or delivering. Just the click of a button.

If you haven’t yet checked out or web site (www.InsuranceJournal.com), let me talk you into it. Granted, I’m biased. Insurance Journal pays my bills, I actually write a large portion of the site’s material, I have a vested interest in the site, yadda, yadda, yadda. But let’s pretend I don’t work here and they don’t give me a paycheck. And I’m in the insurance industry.

Every day by lunch time (actually by about 10 a.m. central), you have all the insurance news in one fell swoop. Not only that, but it’s subdivided into categories: national, regional and international. You’re only interested in Texas? No problem, just go to the Regional News section and choose the South portion. You don’t have time to read? Just scan the headlines.

The beauty of getting your news from a source like Insurance Journal is that editors, like myself, act as human filters. There are a lot of sites that just pull stories that have the word “insurance” in them. But when this happens, you get a lot of things that aren’t essential and just muddy the water.

For example, the last three stories I received off the news wire that had the word “insurance” somewhere within the text of the story include: Orbital to issue warrants in lawsuit settlement, Fitch Rts Orange Cnty FL Sch Bd Lsg Corp COPs Ser 2000B ‘AAA/F1+’, and BroadBand Wireless International Corporation Announces Resignation of CEO Effective August 1.

In addition to looking a bit like garble, the stories have little to do with property and casualty insurance and are of little interest to you. The first company is an aerospace technology manufacturer, the second had to do with Orange County school bond ratings, and the third was about some telecommunication company management shake-up.

Sure, all three had the word “insurance” tucked in there somewhere. But all three were discarded while I waited for more interesting news, like the one that popped up next—Florida and Georgia State Insurance Regulators Order Insurers to Cease Any Collections of Race-Based Premiums in Florida and Georgia.

I’m aware I may be partial to our web site, but that shouldn’t stop you from checking it out. After all, I’m not the winner, you are.