Twenty two of the Tucsoncitizen.com citizen journalists/bloggers attended a holiday thank you party today at the TNI community room at 4850 S. Park Ave. I’ll include a list of who was there later, but the party was hosted by Editor Mark Evans and his wife Lynn and daughter Rachel. Most of the main menu food/drinks/cake was supplied by Gannett Inc., with us volunteer writers contributing other pot luck dishes.

After an initial meet & greet (as many of us have never met), Mark talked about how our page views have almost doubled since January 2010, about staff changes with Anthony Gimino coming on as a Sports Network Administrator, and the resignation (today) of Co-editor Ryn Gargulinki, but the hiring of a new Social Media Editor in January. He wants to add more bloggers, more content, perhaps a new site design & features. Hopefully in the future, some of the blogsites will be generating revenue through advertisements. Mark also spoke of more community outreach through other local media, having a booth at the upcoming March 12 & 13 Tucson Festival of Books, and a booth at next December’s 4th Avenue Winter Street Fair in 2011.

Who attended this afternoon:
Anthony Gimino (Anthony Gimino’s Wildcat Report)
Sonja Taysom (Living Thin)
Peter Norback (One Can a Week)
Jonathan DuHamel (Wry Heat)
Carolyn Classen (Carolyn’s Community – me)
Cherlyn Strong (Paranormal Old Pueblo)
Linda Strader (Dry Heat Gardener)
Bonnie Lewis (Pour me Some Grapes)
Debbie Price (future photo blog)
Molly Thrasher (Tucson Bites)
Karyn Zoldan (From Market to Food Market)
Art Jacobson (The Data Port)
Kyle Arps (Bleed Red & Blue)
Denise Early (Medicare & More)
Charles Spillar (Artistic Tucson)
Larry Liascos aka Jimmy Petrol (Humor: Fueled by Petrol)
Penelope Starr (Telling Stories)
Karl Hoffman (Living on the Border)
Matt Minkus (The Matt Minkus Show)
Bjay Wooley (Tucson Tales)
Scott Terrell (UA Sports.net)
Pamela Powers (Tucson Progressive)

About 7 guests (spouses/partners/friends) also attended and enjoyed the luncheon.
Mark created a 10 question Tucson Citizen trivia contest, which was won by yours truly and 2nd place went to Cherlyn Strong. I won a lightly used Lumix camera (which I need), and Cherlyn won a gift certificate to Target. (If any of you are interested in what the questions were, comment below and I’ll let you know.)

Missed the rest of you who weren’t able to attend & party with us. The online Tucsoncitizen.com started off with 7 bloggers (along with Mark and Ryn) back on June 2, 2009, went up to 45 in January, 2010 and is now at 65 bloggers online! Keep writing everyone!

Happy Holidays from Tucsoncitizen.com.