Lincoln County online newspaper's simple goal: Bring local news to the people
By Robert Wolfington IIIFred and Lisa Schmidt care a lot about what's going on in their community.
A few months ago Fred Schmidt decided to mix his interest in technology with that passion for his community. What resulted is the online newspaper "The Lincoln County Patriot."
Covering community and school events, the newspaper has received 4,000 hits since it launched two months ago.
Fred Schmidt said publishing an online newspaper has been a learning experience.
"It has been fun; I wish I could do this full time," said Schmidt. "In the beginning it was tough because we had to figure out how to get news out there. We had to learn how to get news from government sources and things like that."
Schmidt said the online format of the newspaper allows an open dialog with readers.
"We're just trying to bring local news to people and give them a way to converse about it openly."
The Patriot has covered things like community club meetings and recent school board filings.
Creating a communication source between the Hendricks and Ivanhoe school districts was an important part in their decision to start the publication, Schmidt said.
"The school board is our biggest issue, getting our two schools - Ivanhoe and our local school here - to communicate in a way that moves us all forward," said Schmidt.
The Schmdits are no strangers to working in an online environment. He also owns and operates Nexxus Gate Software in Hendricks.
"(The Patriot) is 100 percent online," said Schmidt. "I'm a computer programmer; we own a company that provides software to hospitals, nursing homes and mental disability facilities."
Fred Schmidt said starting the online newspaper and giving it an online focus reduced a lot of the overhead cost of publishing.
"We don't have the cost of printing to paper, but we also don't have the readership that other papers do," said Schmidt.
Getting the Web site off the ground meant a little leg work for Schmidt, who said he needed to find a good publishing software system.
"I looked for a long time for a system," said Schmidt. "It's too much work for me to develop something like this right now. I found a place that I was comfortable with, and I worked with them to develop things. I've been pushing them hard to get the things that I wanted."
The Patriot is currently a two-person operation, but Schmidt said they have been getting more help recently.
"We're starting to get a lot of help from the schools and a lot of help from people wanting to write their own articles," said Schmidt.
Link: www.lincolncountypatriot.com
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littleguy56289
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09-24-08 2:39 AM
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This is amazing. I've got a somewhat similar thing going in the area of sports reporting at my local school district... but again this is really really good for your towns to have this news source. The biggest issue is getting people in front of the computer to actually read it. You can't get past the simplicity of opening up a hard-copy newspaper.
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LisaSchmidt
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09-23-08 1:09 PM
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Thank you for your article. We appreciate your follow up with us. Lisa
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