By Brian Knox | Published Thursday, September 18, 2008
You may have noticed a few changes recently to the Wise County Messenger's Web site. If you haven't checked it out lately, I invite you to visit www.wcmessenger.com.
I won't go into too much detail about those changes - our production manager and Web master Todd Griffith has put together a full-page ad explaining many of the new or improved features.
But I will tell you that I am excited about the changes because I believe it accomplishes what is the ultimate goal of community newspapers - to both inform the public of what is going on in their community and be a place for the community to share ideas and viewpoints, both with the paper and each other.
The Internet has dramatically changed the way people communicate and the way the public gets its news. Our new Web site still gives you all of the features that have been available in the past, but we've added more. For instance, readers are prompted to leave comments on stories.
For readers who find a story they like, they can link it to our new "My-Wise.com" site where others can comment and vote on that story or any other story on the Internet.
You will also find a variety of staff-written blogs on the Web site where you can discuss topics such as sports, technology, current events and photography. And we'd love to hear more blog suggestions.
For our sports fans, we now offer live blogging from selected high school football games. Even if you can't make it to the game, now you can keep up with the highlights in real time. You can even ask our bloggers questions while they are still at the game.
To increase the communication between the newspaper and the public, I have started an editor's blog, Making a Mess, to give readers a look into what goes into reporting local news. But even more importantly, I'll pose questions to readers to encourage feedback about what people like and don't like. Hopefully this will be a place readers can share ideas.
And speaking of sharing, we now have a place to display reader-submitted photos.
These are just a few of the changes - and we haven't even talked about video, staff photos and soundslides, RSS feeds and the community calendar.
And more changes are still in the works. Todd is currently working on creating a version of our Web site that can be easily viewed from your cell phone.
The changes aren't just with the Web site. Our newspaper has undergone a few changes as well.
The Wise County Messenger has begun true non-duplicating service between the Messenger and its total market coverage product All Around Wise.
"In the past, many Messenger subscribers received a free copy of All Around Wise as well as their regular mid-week paper that also included a copy of All Around Wise," said Mark Jordan, vice president and general manager of the Messenger. "New mailing system technology lets us address each copy of the TMC and makes it possible to eliminate the duplicated circulation," he said.
