Our Corner

Have you checked out our Web sites lately? At all of our Web sites nowinclude stories, photos, slideshows and even video everyday. We are not just a weekly newspaper any longer. We can respond immediately to events, games, traffic issues, bridge closures, school closures and additional information that can help you throughout your day.

Just a few months ago we would have attended the City Council meeting on Monday or Tuesday and, due to the fact we produce the pages of the paper on Monday and send them to the press center in Everett, you could have read about what happened at the council meeting in the paper on Wednesday of the following week, a full nine days later. Now we are able to post the story immediately after the meeting or the following morning at the latest.

Another fun part about our new Web sites is the ability to post slideshows. When reporters go to an event they might take 50 photos, looking for one or two that might make the paper’s printed edition. With the ability to put a slideshow on our site we can post online all 50 photos of the event, giving you a chance to see much more than what appeared in the paper.

If you missed reading about or seeing an event on our Web site you can still search for the story or the event. If the event has a slideshow with it simply type “SLIDESHOW” in the search field and all slideshows we have in our archives will be listed. If you want to purchase any of these slideshow photos you can simply click on the navigation button at the top of the page titled “PHOTO REPRINTS” and you will have the opportunity to purchase the photo in the size you want; you can even have the photo printed on a coffee cup, a T-shirt or other items.

Want even more technology? Last week in Maple Valley, our sister newspaper conducted a debate among three candidates running for a City Council position. We had a live feed into our Web site, we could Twitter (OK, I am still not sure how and what this is) to the Web site and we could have had a live video feed of the debate. How exciting. I’m not sure I ever even dreamed we would be able to do all this at a small weekly newspaper.

With the high school sports season coming up, you can expect slideshows of almost every game, updated scores via Twitter from a reporter at the game and possibly a video of the game after its completion.

We have moved from a once a week, printed, news and information source to a minute-by-minute, fast-paced, information producing, multimedia source using a small town news team. And the best thing about all this change is our reporter’s and editors love it. They always want to be first with a story and now they can.

Take a look, I think you will be pleasantly surprised. Our hope is you will want to come back each and every day to see what’s new and exciting in our area. You can find us at www.blscourierherald.com.