Nearly a year has passed since the inaugural edition of The Crossroads Chronicle was published. As someone who has been involved from its inception, that’s an almost unbelievable statement—but it’s true. Two weeks from now will mark this publication’s first birthday, and the staff here that brings to life the news week after week is extremely grateful for the support we’ve received over the last 50 weeks.
When the first edition hit the streets on January 20, 2021, The Chronicle made a set of promises that were important to both the newspaperists behind the scenes and the readers to whom the product would be delivered. One of those promises was an online presence.
From Day 1, The Chronicle had a web home and the folks here in our office knew how important it would be for our brand and our audience alike to have that online presence. However, what we didn’t know (or perhaps what we underestimated) was the gravity of producing a physical newspaper on top of managing the digital aspect that comes along with it—all with a small staff.
Our online presence has been the one area we’ve fallen short of over the last year. We always knew that would take us from good to great, but we had to prioritize our print product above all else. The Chronicle found itself working toward a goal of freshening online content on a regular basis and making progress in that way—then disaster struck.
Our domain went down a few months ago. In layman’s terms, that means our email addresses and our coded website ceased to exist.
Right away, we began the process of rebuilding a web home. By the end of August, the bones of what would eventually be The Crossroads Chronicle’s website were constructed. We’ve spent the last four months uploading every piece of content curated for the paper into that site, including obituaries, features, business profiles, breaking news, social announcements, sports reports, government news, and more.
After months of tedious work, we’re proud to announce our new site is live at thecrossroads.news. We hope you’ll check it out immediately.
This new site is a product of our dedication and an extension of the commitment we pledged to you, our community, a year ago in bringing you the news to the best of our ability.
You’ll find this site to be desktop and mobile friendly. On the homepage is a scroll bar that features main news headlines, followed by our lead stories for the latest edition.
Beyond that, we have landing pages dedicated to each newsbeat within the regular paper.
All of these stories are sorted chronologically by default, so the search bar located at the top of the site will be especially useful if you’re looking for a particular piece from the past.
We also encourage you to sign up for our free newsletter; to do so, fill out the prompt in the lightbox that appears by default when you visit the site. Opting into this newsletter gets you a solo email weekly filled with a synopsis of that week’s news. (This will not be rolled out for several more weeks, however, as we’re still in beta mode for that particular feature.)
The Chronicle’s new website also offers an online store so you can subscribe to our paper via print or digital subscription. If you do this, please look for a follow-up email from The Chronicle in the days that follow; this is an imperative email and will require your attention.
Additionally, the new site allows you to read a particular author’s works, “like” and leave comments on individual stories on the site, read our company history, become familiar with the faces of our staff and how to best reach everyone respectively, contact us to request information or provide news leads, find our latest list of newsdealers, visit our social media channels by direct link, and chat with someone from our office directly online using the chat bubble at the bottom of the device from which you’re visiting.
Speaking of social media, look for The Chronicle to begin posting regularly new and breaking content alike to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Beyond that, we’ll also be rolling out “memories” from the vault over the last year via Facebook. These particular posts will be a look back at some of our best stories that you may’ve missed in our online absence.
As always, we’re a growing publication. That means we’ll continue to evolve, so some things may change along the way. We may have a few hiccups here and there, but we’ve done our best to prepare our site to be reader-ready this Wednesday, January 5. Should you have any suggestions or issues with our website, please give us a call at 478-331-7251.
We appreciate your support so much and look forward to the next chapter with you all.