Our Web site, myjournalcourier.com, has a new tool coming later this week, powered by Pluck. It is really pretty cool. Let me tell you a bit about it.

Our new commenting and social networking tool that will be added to our Web site. It will take the place of the existing comment tool we have at the bottom of all our stories, including Open Line Online. Now before everyone starts jumping up and down (either in joy or rage), let’s take a look at what this software is and how it can change the way we discuss things on our Web site.

Pluck offers folks the ability to create a “profile” if you wish on our site that follows your activities. You pick your screen name by simply providing us with a verifiable email address. This way it is yours and no one else can use it, at least on our site. When you do register, you will have a whole suite of different things you can do, if you want to. You can create a profile page where others can learn more about you. You can create your own blog and talk about whatever you want. You can respond to others’ comments, blogs etc. The system will allow you to follow along with all the different things you are interested in, follow your comments. You can also create friends lists and communicate with others in the network. Think of it being like a MySpace or Facebook just for the users of myjournalcourier.com!

Now to those of you afraid of losing your anonymity, you need not worry. You can continue to control it. How much information you provide about yourself is completely up to you. If you don’t want anyone to know who you are, that is your choice. All you have to do is just register a screen name and that’s it. It’s rather simple, actually. If you don’t want anyone to know who you are, don’t tell anyone. The good thing is that now no one can create a post or reply to a comment and use your screen name. That way you are assured that no one will try and make a comment using your screen name that you would have never made or said.

We are providing this new tool for a couple of different reasons. First, it is a really powerful program that will allow us to offer a wider variety of tools to network with folks from our community. No other Web site in our area provides this and that in and of itself makes it pretty cool. Second is that we hope that it will clean up some of the nasty comments that have been hitting Open Line Online and some of our other stories. Don’t take this wrong, we want spirited healthy debates on issues. If you have a gripe or complaint, you can still express it. But we hope that this will help eliminate some of the verbal assaults that really aren’t necessary in a healthy debate of issues.

Rest assured, we won’t be selling your email address. That is not our intention. It would be used basically to verify the user has a valid email address, kind of like a physical address. The newspaper may from time to time use the email addresses to send out information about what is coming up in the newspaper or on the Web sites and perhaps alert folks of big breaking news. You won’t be getting spam from us or anyone else.

We are creating this site for you, our readers. An online community is only as good as the folks that are using it. Our goal is to create something that you can feel that you own and contribute to. Pluck will help you do that. I encourage you all to check it out and experience all the cool things it can do. I think you’ll like it and enjoy coming back for more!

Let me hear your thoughts. Drop me a comment below.

I know this is not going to be a particularly popular topic (maybe it will be!) but you have either heard on the radio (I taped an interview with the local station this morning) or heard it word of mouth, but the Journal-Courier will start charging a nominal fee for expanded obituaries in the newspaper.

Now, before you decide that we are evil people, let me try to explain the reasoning behind the decision and what we will be offering for the fee.

Obituary information is an important part of information in the newspaper each day. We know from research that it is one of the most read sections of the newspaper and our Web site statistics tell us that it is consistently one of the top 5 most read sections of www.myjournalcourier.com. We realize this information is important to you.

We have in the past allowed obituary information, no matter how long and descriptive to be run at no charge. The obituaries most days take up an entire page in the newspaper, many times much more space, depending on the number of deaths and the length of the obituaries. The cost to produce this space on a daily basis is very expensive. As everyone knows, it isn’t getting cheaper to produce products nowadays, and the newspaper is no different. To put it plain and simple, we had to do something to cover these increased costs.

We could have raised advertising rates. However right now we felt that wasn’t the best idea. We need our advertisers to advertise their businesses and sell their products. Our local economy needs this more than ever. We could raise subscription prices, however I think they are high enough. I’m sure you agree with that statement!

So we are back at obituaries. A majority of newspapers all over the country charge for expanded obituary information. We are definitely not the first one to do so. Our neighboring daily newspapers directly to our east and west have been charging for years. We have held off on this decision as long as we possibly could.

Just to be clear, we are NOT charging to tell you, our readers, who died and when their services will be conducted. This information will run both in the newspaper and on our Web site for free. What we are going to start charging for is what is considered expanded obituaries. These are the ones that contain a brief history of the deceased person’s life and information. The decision on which type of obituary the family wishes to run is completely at their discretion. The newspaper will not require that the basic information be paid. I wanted to make sure this was clear. If the family wishes to let everyone know all about their loved one, they can do so at a very nominal charge.

The fee is called “nominal” because the rate we are charging is basically the same rate we charge non-profit organizations to run advertisements in our paper. The rate is such that it basically covers our costs to produce and distribute the space. It’s that simple.

Now since we decided to charge for expanded obits, we felt we had to provide more to both the reader and families. When I say more, I don’t mean more newsprint or pages, but added value for what they are purchasing. Starting May 1, we will begin posting all obituaries, full paid and free, on our Web site, www.myjournalcourier.com. Up until now, we have only been putting basic information of the person and service information on our Web site. You can now read the entire obituary online. We will also start including on any paid obituary a service called Legacy. Legacy is a national Web site service that provides different additions to obituaries. The biggest piece is called a virtual Guest Book that will allow friends and families to post condolences and fond memories of the deceased for all to see. It is a very nice feature that many families have used to remember their loved ones all over the world! Newspapers like the London Times use the service. This will be included in the price.

We had an informational breakfast with area funeral home directors last week to introduce them to the new fees and procedures. It was a good meeting with most of them very understanding. They have been dealing with paid obituaries from other newspapers for years now and I guess to sum it up, they were kind of wondering when we would get around to it. It wasn’t a surprise to them, let’s put it that way. I know they weren’t jumping up and down in glee, but I think they felt it coming. These folks had a lot of great suggestions for us, based upon their experiences with other newspapers. We listened very closely and plan to adopt much of what they suggested.

To sum it up, this was not done to charge the dead (the government already does a good job at that) or make huge profits off the families. It is being done to cover our ever increasing costs and do so in a way that is fair to all concerned. We will not deny the readers the information on those who have passed or when you can honor them at the services. If the family, at their choosing, wants to document all that the life of the deceased meant to them, they have that choice. All we ask in return is a nominal fee to cover our costs to do so.

I would really like to hear your thoughts. Please consider leaving me a comment below. Thanks.

Some, maybe most, may not have seen this feature yet, but if you look on the top bar of the calendar box, you will see a button that says “TV Listings.” Click on it and check it out. Powered by MeeVee, one of the leaders in the industry for online TV listings, you can customize it to your zip code, what cable or satellite company you use, and shazam, you get customized listings of what’s on the tube just for you. You can look ahead and see what is coming up and it also gives you information about the shows.

And for you die hard fans of the printed TV listings we have in each Sunday’s edition of the Journal-Courier, check out our new TV section called “Connections.” We just debuted it Sunday, March 2. While it has the same look and feel of the old section with the TV grids for what’s on the tube, the editorial copy is geared toward the “baby boomers” in our area and has a lot of great news and tips. We are really excited about updating this product and hope you all agree. If you have comments or questions about it, or any of our products, please post a comment and let me know.

We added an interactive calendar that allows you to look up events by dates, locations, types … you name it. It also will give you a Google map to the location along with all the information on the venue and event.

Much thanks goes out to Mary Metcalf who spends many hours keeping it updated and functional. We pride ourselves on providing our readers, both in the paper and on the Web, with the most comprehensive calendars so you know what’s going on when you want to know it. Check it out here, it’s pretty cool.

Since the relaunch, we have added even more features to both sites. We redesigned our site in late 2007 to make it easier to navigate and provide more features.

We introduced a new video player that is considered one of the best in the industry on both the regular and varsity sites. While we are still pretty new to the video game, we are working hard to bring you the most compelling local video of events from our area. Sports has been going crazy with game footage, coach and player interviews. They even started their own talk show during football season called “The Big Show.” While these guys will never win any Emmys or Oscars, they have promise in being very funny while giving you recaps of the games and sports news. Hopefully they will start the show up again soon. Dennis, Matt and Brian also have their own blogs that will be showing up on myjournalcouriervarsity.com very soon. Check them out and find out what they have to say and start up a conversation. Isn’t that what these blogs are all about?

This past August, we launched another site, myjournalcouriervarsity.com. This is a Web site entirely devoted to prep sports in our area.

Nowhere ever before in our area has there been one place on the Web where all the sports fans in our area (and you all are nuts about prep sports) can get all of the action. A ton of credit goes to Dennis Mathes, the sports editor for the JJ-C and all his reporters, Brian Webster, Matt Wing, Tanya Hoots and the many stringers and coaches that help us get all this information onto the site.

I can tell you all, when you go from only getting a few stats that you know are the only things you can fit into the paper to asking for, recording and inputing every stat you can get your hands on, it was a huge feat! The entire sports staff worked many sleepless nights getting this info into the system for you all to enjoy.

We went from 14,000 page views and 826 unique monthly visitors to over 106,000 page views and 5,500 unique monthly visitors in just two months. That is phenomenal and I can’t tell you how excited our sports staff was at the acceptance of their hard work.

And boy you have responded! When we started recording stats in May of 2007 (we have one of the best Web stat tracking software packages in the industry), we had about 84,000 page views for the month and 18,000 unique monthly visitors.

A unique monthly visitor is someone who was recorded once for the entire month. This person could have come back a hundred times a day, every day for the entire month, but this particular stat only counts them once a month.

In January of 2008, we had our best month ever with almost 29,000 unique monthly visitors and almost 535,000 page views! Both unique users and pages views have grown every month. I hope this means we are doing something right and creating something that you all enjoy and want to make part of your everyday life. (February of course isn’t finished yet but it is shaping up to be an even bigger month than January!)

First let’s talk just a bit about the new name, myjournalcourier.com.

Thousands of you knew us as journal-courier.net for years. And this name served us well … and it is still there for you die-hard fans with old bookmarks in your browsers. We switched names and brands for a couple of reasons. Myjournalcourier.com was easier to type and remember. Domains with .net are fine but what does everyone really remember, .com.

We chose myjournalcourier.com because we wanted you, Web site user, to feel a connection to the site, that it is indeed your site, because that is what we really believe. This is your site. We want everyone to feel like they have some ownership, that it is a part of their lives that helps enrich it every day, many times a day. We have built this for you, our community.

Well, I guess I am now one of the many that have entered the world of blogging! I don’t write much — usually only when something really gets me fired up — but I have made a commitment to try and be as faithful as I can be and post often.

I don’t know if this will attract a following or not … we’ll see. I guess if you don’t mind reading and want to hear what the publisher of a newspaper thinks about, you might find it interesting.

One of the goals with my blog is to keep you, our faithful readers, up to date from time to time on what we are doing here at the paper and on the Web sites. I hope you are all enjoying the new, expanded Web offerings we have been shoving out to everyone at what we feel like is breakneck speed over almost a year now.

We have really been working hard to bring a site to Jacksonville that is what I would consider to be a daily community meeting place, kind of like a cyber watercooler if you will, where you can catch up throughout the day on what is going on around town, get the news, sports and weather when you want it and also allow all of you to interact with us and others around our region.

Over the next few days, I’ll try to post a new thing each day or so about our site that hopefully will help you find more things to do on myjournalcourier.com and myjournalcouriervarsity.com!