Do you like dogs? Have a big fenced in yard, or a small kennel? Do you want to help out? Then there's a program that you should know about. While at the Clinton animal fair over by the Westlake Ace Hardware on Ohio, we met some representatives of this program. Its a foster program for dogs.
There's another forum coming to the area- No it's not another get to meet the candidates forum, but it will help with the candidates in some areas. It's on Truman Lake News.
From time to time we get letters to the editor. While we like getting these, since they show the interest of the community, we thought there might be a more self controlling way to handle these. This way is with a forum. Although we assume that most people have a pretty good idea as to what a forum is, for the uninitiated, here's a description.
A forum is website that you can control. Think of it as a bulletin board. If you want to sound off about a subject, you can do it here. Kind of like if you put a paper with what you want seen on it with a thumbtack. If someone else wants to respond or add to what you wrote, then they can put something there as well. (Although we do have basic rules and guidelines). Anyone can join in and sound off about any subject in the area.
Right now we have it set up into various categories- politics and outdoors to start off with- including sub categories like fishing or Henry county. We also are going to switch our classifieds to a forum version, so you can get them on faster. Hope to see you there!
We were averaging about 9,000 to 10,000 hits per month at the time. We're doing about three times that right now.As of this story (July 16th) We've gotten 17110 hits, or an average of 1140 hits per day. That means we will probably get over 30,000 hits this month. The message is getting out.
When we started this paper, we decided on a radical new concept- an online TV station (and eventually newspaper) in a rural setting. It seemed like the only time that major news media was here is when something really bad happens, like when the Elks lodge collapsed. The rest of the time, our fair community was pretty much ignored. This is a great place to live, and other people that used to live here are a good chunk of who reads our paper. (Yes, I realize its not REALLY a paper- no paper is involved.)
Well, now we need to make the paper even better. One of the things that some people don't realize, is that news doesn't just magically apppear. While a lot of it comes from just general reasearch, a lot also comes from people and orginizations letting the papers know what's going on. News realeases. Do you know of something going on? Something you wish could get more publicity? Then by all means, please get ahold of us! We're trying to stay away from anything grisly, though. We want stories about baseball teams and people. We want stories about life, outdoors, your church, anything like that. Also, if you want to reach a wide audience, you really can't beat us.Last week I wrote a opinion piece about understanding what our country is about. A few days later, I found an article from Philadelphia about how horrible the country is. Really got my blood boiling, especially since I had just finished the article from last week. I realize that the catch-22 is that if he didn't have the right to publish that piece of trash, the country wouldn't be worth getting mad over. At least not as much. The first amendment is one of the reasons that I do love this country. So is the second. I suppose the third, and on down the line are too, but that's part of that freedom thing I wrote about last week. So I decided to give several people in the area the right to say what they wanted. On the fourth, at Olde Glory Days in Clinton, we turned the microphone over.