More Nebraska State Fair Links

And if you have a story of your own you would like to share, we will give you a place to put it. We welcome all of your stories. Please take a minute to check this out.

2. The newsroom employs 6 beat reporters, 2 full-time photographers and 3 sports reporters. We cover Ag, Cops & Courts, City Government, Health & Business, Education, and Regional along with local and state sports.

3. We have in-house bloggers and community bloggers and we’re always looking for more folks in the community to blog. We’d love to feature you!

4. We’re on Facebook! Friend us if you like (GI Indy), or we also have a fan page if you prefer that

5. Most newspapers have a morgue. The Indy keeps a set of newspapers dating back to the late 1800s in its morgue.

6. Having trouble finding your way around our new site? Try scrolling to the bottom of our front page. We have a full sitemap down there that you can use to easily find what you need.

7. We publish every day of the year except Christmas Day.

8. In addition to our morgue, we have are also archived at the Grand Island Public Library. You can call 308-385-5333 for more info about this.

9. We have an in-house cartoonist who makes everyone jealous with his mad skillz. You may have seen his stuff in the paper in the Editorial section, or Husker section under his alter ego, Louie Longshot. You can view his cartoons for the past two years at http://www.grandislandblogs.com/billdunn/

10. The Independent has a special website set up with complete coverage of the disastrous 1980 tornadoes. “Night of the Twisters” has been made into a book taught in elementary schools as well as a movie. You can find the website at http://www.gitwisters.com.

11. Grand Island had several newspapers in the 1880s. “The city’s first newspaper was the “Platte Valley Independent”, established by Seth P. and Maggie Mobley.  The Platte Valley Independent was a weekly paper, and referred to as a Republican paper.  Another paper also considered to be Republican followed soon after, entitled “Grand Island Times”, and was owned by Charles P.R. Williams.  It began as a weekly paper and later scaled down to semi weekly publishing’s. A third semi-weekly paper was developed for the German population.  It was an eight page, six column paper established by Henry Garn and Charles Boehl.” – source http://www.grand-island.com

12. In order to prepare for each day’s edition, the newsroom meets once in the morning with reporters, photographers and editors to talk about what each of them are working on. Then the editors meet in the afternoon with the copy desk to discuss what stories will be in the next day’s edition.

13. Senior columnist George Ayoub, in edition to his duties at the paper, also teaches a journalism class at Grand Island Senior High.

14. One of the most popular blogs we feature is “Scenes from the Morgue” in which Chad Plambeck in Composing and Bad Movie Buff extraordinaire pulls retro movie ads from old copies of the Independent and talks about the films. Check it out: http://scenesfromthemorgue.blogspot.com/

15. Simply Cooking hostess, Mitzi Stinson, is the wife of our head photographer, Barrett Stinson.

16. A few reporters have jumped on the Twitter wagon: Regional Reporter Mark Coddington (http://twitter.com/markcoddington), Ag reporter Robert Pore (http://twitter.com/robertpore) and Photographer Scott Kingsley (http://twitter.com/skingsley) all tweet regularly.

17. Associate Editor, Pete Letheby, produces a monthly section called Silver Salute that is full of great historical features about GI residents and places.

18. The Independent is the largest news gathering organization between Lincoln and Denver.

19. Our newsroom staff has over 200 years reporting experience combined.

20. The daily poll questions are written by either Community Conversation Editor, Bill Dunn or one of the copy desk editors.

21. The Independent used to be an evening newspaper. We switched to a morning edition on May 4th, 1992.

22. Our website, www.theindependent.com, averages anywhere between 1-2 million pageviews and over 96,000 unique visitors per month.

23. The Online Department consists of an editor, a developer and two videographers – one to cover news and sports and one for advertising.

24. Don’t have a subscription but want to pick up an edition? You can always stop in our office during business hours to pick one up, or check here for our single copy dealer locations.

25. Do reporters pack up and head home at 5pm? Nope! There is always a night reporter on duty until 9pm every night, including weekends.

For the record, we did not wish to do this the first time as we were happy with our old design. But when the newspaper is purchased by a new company, we have to change pretty much everything about the way we publish, and conform to the company’s tools and software.

When GateHouse purchased us, they required us to be on the same software and publishing system as all of their other newspapers. We did not want to give up our administrative ability, but didn’t really have a choice in the matter. Then, we were just as surprised as anyone when GateHouse sold us a mere 9 months later and in effect, caused us to go through the exact same redesign process to conform with the systems the Omaha papers use. I don’t mean that negatively, but it’s definitely been a very difficult year as we have gone through two huge transitions in a short amount of time.

So we didn’t redesign just for the sake of it, which seems to be a common complaint we’re hearing. It was required by our new owners. The good news is that with Omaha, we have administrative control back and can continue to evolve the site using feedback from our readers and we can continue to try to make it as accessible as possible for everyone.

The GateHouse design was very unpopular with many of our users (very sorry GateHouse, I love you guys, but it was), so we took the opportunity with our new owners to revamp and try to get back to what we had before in the way of easy navigation, since we had to do another redesign anyway.

As for the areas of the website that are not currently functioning properly, we do know about them and had the same issues when we switched to GateHouse’s design. The archives, and inside sections such as Occasions, weddings/engagements, Daily Record etc. will be functioning properly soon, but there will be downtime while we work on it.

We ask for your patience during this (hopefully last!) transition and we are doing all we can to get the site back up to the standards you’ve come to expect from the Grand Island Independent.

We completed a redesign of our site to comply with our new owners just under a year ago. We needed to be on their system, which required a total revamp of how things are done in the newsroom. Nine-ish months later, the Independent was sold once again to the Omaha World Herald, and once again, we have to comply with their systems. And so, dear readers, we needed to ‘redo’ the website. The good news is that this time, we have more control and more say in how our website will function. We asked for your feedback – and thank you to everyone who gave it to us! – and took it all under advisement as we strived to build a better, streamlined website that is easier to get around in, and provides more information.

Today we are having a sneak peek at the redesign while we put the finishing touches on it. Tomorrow (December 31st) we will be signing off on it officially, and January 1st, we should be live and kicking

What we would really appreciate is if you popped into our live chat today or tomorrow and tell us what you think! We will be able to take your input and make the site even better – faster than the speed of email

Thank you for your patience and help during this (hopefully last) transition. Over the next year we will continue to bring you improvements and features that will make your Independent viewing pleasure even better, so stay tuned!

We have some big plans in the coming year, including – and I hate to say it – another website redesign. This may irritate some of you just getting used to our last redesign but unfortunately, when the paper was purchased by GateHouse, we had to switch to their web platform. Nine months later we were sold yet again to the Omaha World Herald company and now we must use their web platform, which is totally different. So these redesigns were not of our choosing.

But the good news is with this new redesign we have a lot more say in how we can present our information, and we’ve listened to your feedback both in this blog and in our recent surveys. We are trying for a clean, simpler website. our biggest worry is our navigation. The problem is we have so much information we have to make available that finding a simple, easy way to present it is difficult.

The website we launch our redesign with will constantly be evolving even after we go live with it. We have greater control and flexibility with it now and so we will definitely appreciate your continued feedback as we refine the website.

There will be a liveblog the day we relaunch, again, so you can kick the tires, poke the site with a stick and come tell us what you think I don’t have a definite date just yet, but it will be soon.

Thanks again for all your help!

We currently have 3 or 4 prototypes we’re kicking around and will probably end up taking elements from each of them. But to help us further, we’ve put together a survey. If you have a few moments, please fill out this brief form.

We will use the survey feedback and the feedback from your comments in the last post to guide us as we strive to make the website better. Thanks for your help!

Please click the images to view a larger version (PDF files) and look at it closely. The images are of the new front page of the website, and the front page showing what the dropdown menus might look like. We’re trying to find the best way to present that TONS of information we have to give you.

So take a minute and tell us what you think by either leaving a comment on this post, or sending an email to webmaster@theindependent.com. Thank you so much for your feedback!

Front page (Click to enlarge):

Front page with menu (Click to enlarge):

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Twitter, I’m going to give you what we call a ‘monkey sheet’ (we make it so easy, a monkey could do it ) on how to get started with Twitter and how you can start getting our updates and breaking news through this awesome tool.

Here we go!

1. Go to http://www.twitter.com and click on the green ‘Get Started – Join!’ button.

2. On the signup form, pick a username. Try to keep it fairly short.

3. Choose a password. Something you will remember.

4. Enter your email address (Twitter never spams, never sells your address)

5. Type in the code words in the ‘Captcha’ box (this is a measure that prevents spammers from creating fake twitter accounts.)

6. Click ‘I accept. Create my Account.’ – You’re all done!

Twitter may ask if you want to email invites to people, but you can skip that step.

Once you’re set up, you can play around with your settings, change the design of your Twitter profile page, add a short bio and upload an image that represents you. But if you want to start tweeting right away, all you need to do is type your tweet in the box that asks “What are you doing?”

That’s what Twitter is. It lets you tell people what you’re doing. From the mundane to the important. From fun stuff, to sad. It lets you vent when you’re angry, or spread good news. You can share links with your followers (more on that in a minute) or find out what your friends, families, and favourite people are doing. It sounds silly, but it’s endlessly fascinating.

A bit of Twitter trivia – did you know that the founder of Twitter is a Nebraska native? Yep! According to his bio, Evan Williams is “originally a farm boy from Nebraska.” He also created the wildly popular blogging software, Blogger, which is now owned by Google. So by joining Twitter, you’re supporting a Nebraska boy

Now, about followers. Here is how you can follow The Independent’s twitter updates:

1. Click this address: http://twitter.com/theindependent

2. Click the grey ‘Follow’ button underneath our logo at the top. – You’re done! You will now see our updates appear underneath your ‘What are you doing’ box. Cool eh?

If you want to follow more people, or you have some friends or family already on Twitter, you can go to http://search.twitter.com and search by location or name, and then follow. Or you can look at other who other people follow and see if there’s anyone you want to add to your follower list.

Here’s a list of followers that might be of interest (click their twitter name to go to their page)

Famous Folk:

• Wil Wheaton (@wilw) – If you’ve ever seen “Stand By Me” or “Star Trek: TNG” you know who Wil is. He is all grown up now and turned out to be a fantastic writer, blogger and Twitterer.
• Stephen Fry (@stephenfry) – American audiences might know Mr. Fry from ‘V for Vendetta’ or appearances on ‘Bones,’ but in Britain, he is a legend Highly recommend following his tweets.
• Greg Grunberg (@greggrunberg) – Actor Grunberg plays Matt Parkman on ‘Heroes’ and was also Eric Weiss on ‘Alias.’ Yes, it really is him.
• Shaquille O’Neal (@THE_REAL_SHAQ) – Yep, the Shaq is an avid Twitterer
• MarsPhoenix (@MarsPhoenix) – If you’re an astronomy buff, you might be interested in following messages from the Mars Phoenix probe that is on Mars collecting data until it ‘passed away.’

Local Twitterers:

• The Independent (@theindependent) –
• Scott Kingsley (@skingsley) – Award-winning Independent photographer Scott Kingsley also tweets.
• Mark Coddington (@markcoddington) – Regional reporter, Mark Coddington, has joined the Twitterverse!
• Robert Pore (@robertpore) – Independent Ag reporter Robert shares ag news and info.
• George Ayoub (@georgeayoub) – Senior writer George Ayoub tweets and posts his latest blog posts.
• Denton Cushing (@dcushing) – Denton is our staff videographer. If you’re looking for our latest vids, check his tweets to see what he’s working on.
• Steve White (@stevewhitenews) – NTV reporter Steve White tweets!

This should be enough to get you on your way! I should mention that there are many ways to access Twitter – you don’t have to use the website. Here are some other options:

• Use a desktop client called Twhirl (www.twhirl.org) – Twhirl runs in the background and automatically refreshes periodically, and lets you know when you have messages sent directly to you. It works on PCs and Macs and is FREE. But there are many options for desktop Twitter clients. Just hit Google up for more info
• Tweet from your cell phone! In your settings you can set up Twitter to accepts text messages, so you can tell the world what you’re doing no matter where you are!

So these are the Twitter basics which should be enough to get you on your way. If you would like to explore Twitter a little further, you can check out Twitter’s FAQ pages at http://help.twitter.com. And please feel free to contact me as well. I would be happy to help.

Happy tweeting!