Enfield Patch Readers: Thank You For Helping Us Grow

ENFIELD, CT — This is my 36th year covering Enfield, the town in which I grew up and graduated twice (Enrico Fermi High School and Asnuntuck Community College). Enfield has a rich, storied social and cultural history: it was the location of Jonathan Edwards' famous "Sinners In the Hands of an Angry God" sermon in 1741, it received an All-America City Award in 1970, and has been home to such diverse celebrities as actor/activist Paul Robeson, ESPN founder Bill Rasmussen and U.S. Hockey Hall of Famer Craig Janney.

Over the past three-plus decades, I've seen countless examples of how this community has rallied together, in a crisis or during times of elation. Enfield has celebrated state championship victories, become one of the nation's leading advocates for veterans, suffered a week-long power outage during a freak autumn snowstorm, and as recently as this week, grieved over the stabbing death of a teenage student.

Thank you, Enfield Patch readers, for taking time in your busy days to spend a few moments with Patch. We appreciate your visits and contributions, and we want you to know we take nothing for granted here.

Last month, stories on Enfield Patch recorded almost 48,000 visitors. For a small city of 44,368 people, that's a lot of readers! Our visitors hail from Enfield, for sure, but many residents of neighboring towns also land on Enfield Patch from time to time, too. That figure — compiled and verified through Google Analytics — includes readers on desktop, laptop, tablet, mobile and our app, and our visitors often access Patch on several devices over the month.

Here are five of the most-read articles on Enfield Patch in the past six weeks.

• Suspect Arrested in Slaying of Enfield High School Student
• More Spelling Snafus on Signs [PHOTOS]
• Former Enfield Resident Shows Opposite Emotion in 2018 BTS Photo
• Enfield to Host Annual Amy Romano Memorial Field Hockey Scrimmage
• Doctor, Enfield Native, Recounts Treating 9/11 Pentagon Victims

Got a news tip? I'm Tim Jensen, your local editor. I have been working at various publications in Connecticut for more than three decades, beginning as a high school sports columnist for the Enfield Press in the early 1980s, and eventually becoming editor-in-chief of that newspaper (remember newspapers? Those things people used to read in the morning with their coffee?). Send your tips, ideas and questions my way at tim.jensen@patch.com.

Our readers also love Enfield Patch's calendar of events — more than 15,600 visits have been made to our calendar in 2018. Coming up soon on the calendar are a popular mum sale, a car wash fundraiser and a healthcare job fair. Lots of things going on in Enfield this month!

If you would like to post on Enfield Patch, too, you may easily to sign up for a free user profile. As a Patch user, you can post articles, events, jobs, and announcements. And the "rules of Patch" are easy to follow: "no abusive content, no commercial spam, keep it local, and be awesome."

Speaking of awesome, a new bright spot at Enfield Patch is our Patch Mayor program. If you’re interested in being our Enfield Patch Mayor, you can help keep Enfield Patch a friendly local spot. Learn more about the Patch Mayor program here.

If you contribute to Enfield Patch, you're likely to reach a lot of local people. So far this year, 598 new email subscribers have joined Enfield Patch, boosting our email list to 3,532 daily subscribers. (Wait? You don't get our email? Click here and we'll hook you up.) And 658 Enfield lovers joined our Facebook page this year, too. We're almost at 8,600 fans! If you haven't liked our page yet, please give it a try. If you're already on the page, please share with a friend. Reaching 9,000 fans in September would be a huge milestone for us.

If you own a local business and are interested in getting your message on Enfield Patch or our nearby Patches, please visit the page and tell us what you need. One of our sales reps will be in touch.

Here's another fun fact about Patch: Did you know that Patch is among the 100 most trafficked websites in the United States? Patch ranks 91st on the most viewed websites in the country, according to Alexa. Enfield Patch is part of a broad network, with more than six dozen Patches in Connecticut and more than 1,200 across the United States. That's a lot of local news!

Many news websites are limiting access to free articles, but Patch articles and events by our journalists and our users are always free to view.

We're thrilled you've made Enfield Patch a part of your life. Thank you so much for your support and readership.

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We've taken the best of Patch and packed it into a lightning fast, super-clean app that is loaded with features users have told us they want. If you haven't tried the app, give it a try. You can get the latest local news sent straight to your iPhone or iPad home screen on the free Patch app for iOS or the Android app.

Photo credits: Tim Jensen, Patch Editor