Dear readers,

 

Hello BSP community. After 17 years publishing the BlueStone Press newspaper we are offering a website for the first time. Please notice, it is not our intention to offer the newspaper online, rather our goal is to use the site to strengthen our connection with our readers.

 

You’ll find it easy to connect with a reporter. You can place classified ads right on the site and all the classified ads are now available online. Also, many of our calendar items were left on the cutting room floor. Now you can post and view all the calendar events at length. We really do have a very active and incredible little community!

 

On that note, we also find ourselves with a number of photographs from around the community that don’t make it into the newspaper. We are happy to share these photos and also include some of yours in the newspaper, and now we have a place to put the photos that didn’t get into the paper. For instance, we had about 20 Rondout graduation photos and only 3 got into the newspaper.

 

The website will also on occasion give us an opportunity to break a story. Due to our publication schedule, our reporters occasionally sit on a breaking news story for two weeks. Most of the time, the news cycle isn’t so demanding that we can’t wait a week to publish our stories, but it does happen and we regret having to wait, so there will be times we’ll break a story online.

 

Please also see that you can advertise online by following the prompts on “post your ad here” it is really fun to do, they look great and they are reasonably priced. The office can also help you in this process and there are larger ads in the rotating screen that we can set up for you. Just call or email the office and we’ll get that going for you.

 

Going mobile:

We do not have incredible budgets here. However, for those with iphones, you can create an “ap-like” feel by going to the website in Safari and pressing the “go to” button then choose, “add to home screen”. This will make it easier to check in with your local newspaper or even email us a quick pic on a breaking story! (Android and Windows phones likely have procedure for this as well.)

 

Thanks so much for taking a look. The website component is a creative process that will evolve as we go. We are truly enjoying it, and look forward to making the BlueStone Press a truly complete local newspaper experience for you!

 

All the best,

Lori Childers

Publisher