Dear SEC fans,

Today we are proud to unveil our upgraded home page.

We hope that this day represents more than making it simple and aesthetically pleasing to find our best content on SaturdayDownSouth.com.

As we work toward our sixth season together, we want to publicly recognize that we are blessed as a company. We firmly believe that SEC football fans are the most passionate and loyal content consumers in the world. It is because of your passion that we have been able to build an enormous following of more than 3 million on Facebook and in some months average more than 1 million page views per day. All that has emerged from what was a simple idea pursued by a few entrepreneurs who eventually grew big enough to provide jobs for journalists like me.

We recognize that none of that would be possible without your loyalty to your team, your interest in SEC football and your willingness to engage with our content.

We are still young as a company, and much like a child, there have been periods of growing pains along with growth spurts. To use another analogy, there have been times when the SDS family has gone through disagreements. Especially in the last two years, Saturday Down South has undergone a major evolution, and at times we’ve faced our share of internal conflict. We have been through a number of learning experiences, and we’ve digested some hard lessons.

As we emerge from that and enter our sixth year, we finally feel ready to blossom. It’s time to put all those lessons to good use, and to better reward your passion and loyalty as an audience. I’m proud to say that the company leadership and all of the journalists SDS employs are united in that quest.

We’ve put together an internal document for 2016 that is entitled “Editorial Vision.” The No. 1 priority listed within the document is “put the reader first.” Our content decisions should always contribute toward building and reinforcing the long-term trust of you, our readers. We wouldn’t exist without you.

There are three things that we must do as a company in 2016 to ensure that we follow through on that promise:

1. We must provide you with unique quality content. If we aren’t providing original pieces with first-hand reporting, in-depth research, time invested in the editorial process and effort spent toward presenting our content, we are failing to serve you as readers. I am excited about our potential to bring you these types of stories with greater regularity. Today you will find an in-depth piece on Dak Prescott. We sent a reporter to Indianapolis for the NFL Combine, and Prescott’s agent was gracious enough to let us go behind the ropes with Dak to walk through the experience with him. We will be able to provide you with an up-close portrait of the man and the quarterback as he makes his leap to the NFL. We have many more ideas planned, and we are thrilled to be able to better serve you with them.

2. We must deepen our coverage of and reporting on all 14 SEC teams. We strive every day to provide you better coverage that is specific to your favorite SEC football team. Whether that’s sharpening the types of angles that we’re providing you or continuing to direct our resources toward the pursuit of writers, editors and stories, we are working long hours and constantly evaluating ourselves. As reporters, we have covered SEC Media Days, the College Football Awards Show, several bowl games, multiple Under Armour All-American games and this year’s national championship in Glendale, Ariz. We will be doing more reporting moving forward. It will take some time, but we fully intend to gather news and insight from all 14 SEC campuses.

3. We must improve our editorial process. As we’ve grown, Saturday Down South has developed a reputation for making mistakes in our stories. It’s not something we’re proud of, but we aren’t the type to hide from reality. We realize that some of that criticism was well-deserved. We have taken a hard look at our editorial process and decided to invest more time, energy and personnel toward editing our stories. We want to make sure we’re devoting resources to shaping better content to serve you as readers, and we are taking steps to set higher standards of quality.

Journalism and the media has undergone a massive transition. As the nucleus of the industry has shifted from print to digital, there continue to be adjustments to how content is created and distributed. Some would call it a crisis. Although the industry has grappled with difficult issues, we respectfully disagree with that premise.

As traditional media and digital startups continue to evolve, we expect the two sides to meet in the middle — hopefully sooner than later. Reporting — talking to players, coaches, athletic directors, industry experts and more — always will be the crux of covering SEC football. We do not discount the value of reporting. It’s a relationship business first and foremost. It’s vital that even with changing business realities, we all contribute original reporting. As participating members of the media, we don’t take that responsibility lightly.

Curating content, or “aggregation,” also is a part of media in 2016. It has produced much consternation, particularly from the old guard. While there have been sites that misuse it, including “stealing” content without providing appropriate credit, the reality is that not every SEC football media entity can gather first-hand information for every single story. Thousands of people can’t talk to Nick Saban every day. He’s got a football team to run.

This type of content should never be the only thing that a site produces. And it’s important to always credit the original source of information. But it does serve in three positive ways: 1) it allows you, the reader, to get important information faster and more readily; 2) it drives more traffic toward the original story, organization and reporter; and 3) it helps media companies address the business realities of our industry so that we are able to fund and sustain original content and reporting.

We expect more changes in coming years as social media, video and content distribution continue to migrate. But rather than this being a sky-is-falling doomsday, we see all these changes as a great opportunity. Rather than stand flat-footed, as a company and as an industry we must adapt. You won’t hear any whining about the new way of things from us, or hear us mope about the challenges. It’s up to us to be intelligent enough to come up with a sound strategy that addresses all the difficulties while still managing to serve you as readers. That’s a challenge we gladly accept on a daily basis.

It will take time for us to fully mature. But I can proudly say that as a company we are fully committed to quality, from the ownership to the editors and writers. We’re positioned to produce some great original, journalistic content as well as to keep you informed and entertained every single day.

Thank you again for your readership. It is something that we don’t take for granted and that we spend every day working to honor. We invite you to continue on this journey with us as we get better at serving you.

Is anyone else already impatient for the season to start?

–Christopher Smith, Editor-in-Chief