The Anna News

drax0r and I officially stood up The Anna News website last week, the online companion to the local weekly paper, after meeting with the owner of North Texas Media, with whom we shared a dream. Of course glodowg already knew that prior to her plan for this partnership being made public. Always thinking, always moving silently in the background.

The Owner and Editor both are regular visitors to The Anna Texas Community Forum which drax0r and I own and moderate, and we'd tried to get some cross-pollination going last year, but our intel was sketchy at that point, and we had been barking up the wrong tree. Couple that with the paper's previous failed attempts at a regularly-updated online edition, and our vocal charge of such, and glodowg coordinated a plan for us to put our money where our mouths were. It was an easy choice for them, as they were already familiar with us, and and easy choice for us, since we've been straining at the bit for this opportunity.

The Anna News is a relatively young paper to this town - also the city's only true local paper - the others in circulation are multi-city papers. Upon its release, not only were drax0r and I impressed with a paper focused solely on our fair city, but also its balance, and more importantly, its accuracy which the other papers seemed to have a difficult time reporting. I suppose you could say it was only a matter of time, as we had attempted to help out with the webpage previously, to no avail, but glodowg, she who moves in mysterious ways, by very definition, moved in a mysterious way, and connected all the dots unbeknownst to us.

Granted, running a paper takes a lot more work than running a forum, but not only are we producing the website, we're also contributing columnists. Armed with our shiny new press passes, our next adventure together will be to build-out a cache of stock photographs around town from which to choose from for the varied and myriad topics on which we'll publish. (Yes, that's my house on the front page - I don't have a lot of royalty-free images in which to use, so I've been using my own!)

North Texas Media owns several local papers, and we're using Anna, Texas as the website's testbed. Based upon its eventual success, we're hoping to arm each of those cities with an online version, and in fact have already started on the city just South of us, The Melissa News. Where oh where will this rabbit-hole take us next? Stay tuned, and keep your eye on glodowg for even we cannot predict her next shocking announcement. All for one and one for all, ya'll!

An interview of the site's premier and some background information can be found here.