Hometown hubs
Back in July, you'll recall, I talked about our plans for an online Summerfield site with a print component, with community residents writing about their community for online and the best submissions being included in a weekly print page. Community Editor Betsi Robinson, who is overseeing this effort, has come up with a name for it: Hometown Hubs.
Earlier this week, tech maestros Charlie Stafford and Kevin Lockamy met with me, Betsi and the senior writer on Betsi's team, Tom Steadman, to talk about the practical aspects of getting the online component of Summerfield's Hometown Hub up and going.
We'll be launching the site in a few weeks, and this afternoon Betsi and I met with JR and Managing Editor Ann Morris to figure out where else we might launch Hometown Hubs later this year. We settled on two that we hope to launch before year's end and two more we hope to launch soon thereafter, and the only reason I'm not telling you now where they are is that we have to notify some people in-house first, and some of them are still burning vacation.
The initial focus of Hometown Hubs is on geographic communities, but we think the concept will work for communities of interest, as well. I'll be talking more about these projects as we get more details nailed down, and as always, if you have any thoughts on what they should include, give me or Betsi a shout.
Comments (2)
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This is in reference to your previous post.
So much for the Town Square concept, huh, Lex?
The community conversation just gets shut down when you or the N&R are challenged, right?
So is the banning of critics and satirists about to begin?
Posted on August 26, 2005 5:17 PM
No, Jerry, but once in a very great while (three or four times out of 260 posts since the blog started) I conclude that the conversation has veered from dialogue to invective and isn't likely to return, so I close off comments on that particular post, mainly to give all involved a chance to calm down.
With two exceptions, the only IPs I've banned have been spammers. The two exceptions were people who refused to abide by the terms of service despite repeated warnings.
I'm not sure why it's so important to you to comment here, but if you want to discuss ideas and issues here, please do -- civilly, without baggage. That's all I ask.
Posted on August 26, 2005 10:50 PM