TOMS RIVER: As we enter 2021- a world of uncertainty, we are working to become one of the best Ocean County hyper-local news services. This is a crowded field of local news websites, Facebook pages, and printed newspapers- all vying to gain readers/subscribers/followers. OCSN is no different, we are a for-profit business registered in New Jersey with a PO Box for official mail. We are building on our own business strategy, and how we can stand out among the competition.

Ocean County Scanner News began in July of 2013 as a small Facebook scanner news page. It was a one-man show, with calls often injected with humor. As the page grew in popularity, the direction of OCSN was more focused on presenting basic factual news heard off scanners to the public- from a neutral perspective. Later a website was launched, and formal business was organized. Today OCSN has a core group of volunteers who deliver news and gather pictures, and we rely on anonymous tips from our readers and followers. Ocean County Scanner News maintains a 24/7 anonymous text-tip line at (304) 506-OCSN (6276). Users can send us text, images, or video to that line- and we will use the material with or without credit.

Now as we see what February 2021 has to offer, OCSN is approaching 50,000 Facebook follows, along with hitting network server limits due to increased web traffic. All of this is good positive things, but like everything- we are experiencing growing pains. Over the next week or so, users might notice fewer original articles/stories/content as we migrate our servers to ones with larger capacity. Unlike others, we do NOT use Amazon Web Services (AWS) directly, and maintain our own infrastructure to ensure our voice is uncensored. We will also be better organizing our existing staff, possibly adding more volunteers/interns and working out new partnerships among other news outlets.

While all of this sounds exciting, it doesn’t mean anything is necessarily changing. We still need to share calls about crazy people screaming in Seaside at midnight. You all come here for quality content like that, which only OCSN can deliver. This is more of adding additional content, and giving users more reason to choose our website and social media pagers for their trusted news source. OCSN also needs to overhaul our live scanner feeds. This allows users to our website to click and listen to certain scanners programmed for Ocean County.

So in closing, thank you to everyone who understands us, our coverage, and how we deliver the news. We get that our style isn’t for everyone, but those who do get it- we appreciate the support. Stay tuned for more news as it becomes available. Just pardon the dust over the next week or so as we refocus our efforts.