New Logo
It's been a long day at the office, but WisCommunity is now Eye On Dunn County. All of the heavy lifting is (I think) finished and there are mostly lots of niggling little oddities to fix. The site name was originally picked for a completely different purpose. I had imagined it as a state-wide site for discussion on all sorts of topics, and I hoped to promote more serious discussion than one typically sees on Facebook. Unfortunately, Facebook was where people were and that was how they liked it.
Over the years the site slowly morphed into being an actual news site. And it was time to re-brand to reflect what we're actually up to. So here we are. There's still a little bit of infrastructure to clear up behind the scenes, and as you may have noticed if you went to the site earlier today, I completely broke the site for about 30 minutes in the process. Odd how much havoc a single missing parenthesis can cause.
You may also have noticed that the ads are gone - I'm waiting for Mr. Google to approve the new domain.
In other exciting news, WisCommunity has received some money for undergoing a sustainability audit. This audit was run through LION Publishers, the Knight Foundation, and the Google News Initiative. We're grateful for the advice received and the money. We're putting it to good use, mostly by hiring some freelance reporters to expand our coverage, and for a few other projects you will be seeing in the coming months. I'm still looking for people to do coverage of government meetings and general news stories.. Please use the contact form on the site if you would like to be hired.
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If you looked at the site on Sunday you may have noticed some big changes. WisCommunity is becoming Eye on Dunn County. Most of the transition work is in place and we hope to be finished later this week. In the meantime, enjoy the new site.
The Dunn County Infohub was a project that I did in conjunction with the Local News Group which was intended to be a curated set of news articles about Dunn County, along with other sources of information. The group decided this was not really a possible part of their mission as a fiscally-sponsored nonprofit, and they turned the rights for the site over to WisCommunity. I am currently incorporating the site into the main WisCommunity website, and the main page is now working and will have more information available as time goes on. The old dunncountyinfohub.com domain name now redirects to the page in WisCommunity.
We've been WisCommunity for a long time, but think it is time for a change. The name made sense when I started this project, but it now doesn't really fit very well. Initially this site was supposed to be a state-wide discussion platform, but over the years it has changed and is now a news platform for Dunn County.
We'd like your help picking a new name. We're asking for ideas. If you'd like to put in your ideas, go to our survey form.
Also -- if you were expecting your weekly email of events, we're working on cleaning that up a little bit. It should be back next week.
Those of you subscribed to our daily email list may have been surprised the last few days to see every article listed twice. Believe me, I was as bewildered as you were. This morning, though, I realized the error of my ways. This should now be fixed. I am still trying to get the hang of the transition from Mailchimp to Mailerlite.
Another project in the queue is a re-branding of WisCommunity. You can look forward to seeing a small contest to gather ideas for a new name. WisCommunity made sense in the first iteration of this website, when it was designed to be a state-wide discussion network. Since the general opinion was that nobody needed this because Facebook exists (I still think that was the wrong way to look at things) the discussion aspect never really took off. Over the years the site has transitioned to being a news source with almost no discussion. The new website is a realization of the fact that the site's mission is now completely different, and is filling the news desert that Dunn County has become. With the changed mission it is time for a new name and brand. Watch this space - there'll be more information soon.
Steve is a member of LION Publishers , the Wisconsin Newspaper Association, the Menomonie Area Chamber of Commerce, and the Local Media Consortium, is active in Health Dunn Right, and is vice-president of the League of Women Voters of the Greater Chippewa Valley.
He has been a computer guy most of his life but has published a political blog, a discussion website, and now Eye On Dunn County.
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