In just a few weeks, The Kewanee Voice will celebrate six months of providing local news, information and sports to the community. The website launched on May 2 of this year and since then, hundreds of articles have been written and published by our dedicated team.
When Mike Berry and I first began this endeavor back in November of last year, it was just the two of us writing as much local news as we could provide through a Facebook page and news app. Since then, along with the help from our dedicated and knowledgeable board of directors, TD Welch, Paula Kapacinskas, Nichelle Morey, Taurean Bond, Van DeVilder, Jesse Humphrey and Lauren-Dynes Gillespie, and our great team of writers- Dave Clarke, Margi Washburn, Jill Bartelt, Dean Karau, Carol Gerrond, Matt Worden and Jami Townsend, our readership has grown. We now have tens of thousands of unique visitors to our website and just last month, we reached one million events or user interactions on our website.
So, we were curious about how we were doing and a few months ago, we put out a readership survey on our Facebook page asking our readers to weigh in on our progress. We wanted to know where we could improve, what you enjoyed reading and any suggestions you might have.
And you responded. Dozens of readers chimed in, providing us with a report card, of sorts, that we could use to evaluate our impact. And most of the comments, we are happy to say, were positive and encouraging.
You told us what you liked to read on our website, and the answers varied. One of the first readers to respond was a fan of Margi Washburn’s columns. She has quite a few of those. Many readers reported clicking on the police blotter while others said they relied on The Kewanee Voice for obituaries and sports coverage.
When we first began to develop the idea of the nonprofit new site, our goal was to bring back local sports coverage. Since Jami Townsend has joined the team, coverage has increased and recently, with the help of Jami, and funding from the Harry Anderson Memorial Trust, we have been able to launch a student journalism program that will teach juniors and seniors from both school districts to cover sporting events. It’s our hope to increase high school coverage for the upcoming winter sports.
Other reader’s favorites included feature stories, history columns and human interests. Many of you told us that you like positive stories about people doing good in our community. We agree.
“Local news by local journalists is an amazing thing for us to have,” said one reader.
The number one reply when we asked what you liked to read was “all of it.”
We also asked for suggestions and many people offered constructive criticism of the news site. One person suggested a calendar for events, and it’s actually a feature we have seriously discussed. It would give readers a central location to find all of the wonderful events happening in Kewanee and the surrounding area, and we intend to investigate adding such a feature in the future.
The website continues to grow and change and as our readers express their desires, we try to listen. Very early one, the site lacked a way to print off articles. It was around graduation in May, when many people would have liked to print off articles about their graduates, that we realized it was a real issue. So as quickly as we could, we reached out to our web design team, Team WTI, and asked that our articles be printable and shareable to Facebook and through email. We’ve had that feature for several months and we hope people are utilizing it and enjoying it. Future plans include adding a real estate section and we are presently at work doing that now.
Our recent addition of a classified section is a work in progress. We added the section at the tail end of the yard sale season, but we hope that next spring, people will take advantage of the page by donating just $10 for a week-long ad. We also have a section for selling items. It’s just a $10 donation for an ad, or $15 with a photo. There’s also a job listing section for $15 and a place for legal ads and notifications.
Many respondents didn’t have any suggestions for us but simply wished for us to “keep up the good work.” We appreciate the readers who took the time to give us feedback and as always, we will endeavor to give the community the most accurate, updated news and information.
The Kewanee Voice team is dedicated to continuing to provide local journalism, information and sports to the City of Kewanee and the surrounding area. Remember, we love your news tips and ideas, and you can reach us at news@kewaneevoice.com.
Thanks for allowing The Kewanee Voice to be your number one choice for local news.
***Director Jesse Humphrey’s name was left off the list of The Kewanee Voice board of directors in an earlier version of this editorial. It has been edited to correct the omission.
