It was clear that fear and frustration ran deep following the murder of Eliza Fletcher and also the citywide lockdown that resulted from the spree killing by a 19-year-old.

Absent polling, one indication of these emotions can be seen in the dramatic surge in visitors to local news media’s websites.  The number of visits to most media website doubled.

The first column is previous month’s totals for website visits and the second column is for September (the average length of the visit is in parentheses):

Daily Memphian              494,400 (1:58)                          601,700 (1:56)

Commercial Appeal       974,500  (1:40)                      1,900,000 (1:45)

WREG-TV                         2,300,000 (3:19)                      4,700,000 (2:53)

WMC-TV                           1,000,000 (2:16)                      2,600,000 (1:49)

Local 24                               465,040 (2:49)                         826,900 (2:03)

Fox 13 News                       957,500 (1:37)                      3,000,000 (1:32)