The Johnson City Press announced that heavy traffic volume generated by links on national Web sites to their article about a vendor’s eviction from The Mall at Johnson City caused JohnsonCityPress.com’s servers to bog down.
The story was about the plight of Dan Fuchs, owner of a small printing company called the Graphic Edge, which specializes in novelty items like bumper stickers, coffee mugs and T-shirts.
According to the JCP, the number one seller for Fuchs was anti-Barack Obama merchandise, which accounted for over half of his merchandise. Fuchs was seeing an increase in business at his kiosk when The Mall gave him an eviction notice last Friday.
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Fuchs said he was given no reason for this termination and was shocked and upset. Thursday evening, Fuchs said mall officials met with him and told him to take down the anti-Obama items on display by closing time or face immediate eviction.
Press Information Technology Director Alan Broyles said. “We received over 40-thousand unique visits and over 50-thousand page views from the time Drudge posted the link around 9:10 Monday morning through 5:15 Monday afternoon.”
“We apologize for any inconvenience to our regular Web visitors and to those who are interested in this story and that’s about all we can do at this point,” Broyles said. “We only have a certain amount of resources at our disposal and at one point today we were getting roughly 5,500 hits per hour. We are making every effort possible to keep things working on our end.”
This story is developing -
Personally I feel like I was unfairly terminated from the Mall at Johnson City. 10 minutes after I was told to “balance out” and display a fair amount of “Pro Obama” items, evenly balancing out the Anti-Obama items, I was also told my lease was safe until it expired, I was then handed my termination papers.
I have asked the general public for ideas and suggestions on what else to display, but yet all I have recieved was ________________ (BLANK). Not even a single suggestion from those who opposed my displays.
I welcome all comments. Please send me an email (graphicedgeonline@gmail.com) and comment on your views and opinions on this subject matter. I also welcome you to freely contact me by phone at 423-773-4746. All merchandise and others will be available online at http://www.graphicedgeonline.com within 2 or 3 days from the airing of this news broadcast.