A popular local media site is making a transition away from covering day-to-day crime news.

Since 2011, New Bedford Guide has been a site that has grown from just focusing on some of the happenings around the city, to one that over 200,000 people visit daily.

Michael Silvia, founder of New Bedford Guide, announced on Tuesday that the New Bedford Guide will "stop posting the less significant, daily" crimes while still reporting on "significant regional crime stories." Silvia appeared on Barry Richard's program on WBSM and said the daily crime stories had overtaken the site and changed the perception of what he wanted New Bedford Guide to be.

"It's never been our focus to do crime," Silvia said. "I'd say out of 20 posts, we do one crime. But that post seems to trump most other posts that you do," he said.

That means no more stories about robberies and drug overdoses, he said, and getting back to covering the happenings around the city. He said that it will free up time and resources to focus on more in-depth stories about the people, businesses and events in the city. But if something big breaks crime-wise, New Bedford Guide will still give it coverage.

"We're just not going to report the day-to-day crime," he said. "We're not going to look at the (police) blotter all day long and go, 'Oh, that's interesting, let's just put that out there for clicks' and stuff like that."

In his posting and in the interview, Silvia cited the fact that crime is down 10 percent in the city over the last two years. But he also told Richard he feels as if New Bedford Guide kept perpetuating the view that the statistics were untrue simply by reporting on so much crime and then watching it go viral.

"We're amplifying it with social media," he said of the false impression of the crime stats. "We're showing it every day on your phone. You're getting every single update possible, so it looks like crime is not down."

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