New website set to launch

After months of planning and preparation, the newly designed website for the Mountain Home News will launch this Friday, offering a dynamic, interactive destination for internet users to access continuously updated local news from Elmore County and eastern Owyhee County.

The home page of the new site at -- www.mountainhomenews.com -- greets visitors with a visually appealing and easy to navigate interface, with features like a rotating photo slideshow of top stories, daily coverage of area news headlines, entertaining and informative writings from staff and non-staff bloggers, a community calendar and coverage of breaking news from around the country.

"We are very excited to bring this to the Mountain Home community and surrounding areas," said Coleen Swenson, publisher of the Mountain Home News.

"For over a hundred years, the Mountain Home News has been the primary source of news for the county and with the new website, we will continue that tradition of being the place to go for local news and sports stories," Swenson remarked.

The new website is designed to encourage user-interactivity with opportunities for visitors to add reader comments to stories and blog postings, send letters to the editor and also submit personal photos to share with other site visitors.

The home page will feature an area called "InFocus", that will offer users the ability to upload and share their personal photos and also view photo collections of area people, places and events taken by talented, local photographers contracted by the newspaper.

Using a third party vendor, MyCapture, the photos and photo related merchandise offered will be available for purchase from the site.

"We want to get the news to the people as quickly as we can and also give them a chance to 'talk back' and send us their comments on stories and issues in the community,"Swenson said, "This new site gives people the opportunity to do that."

An "Opinion" category will display editorial content and letters to the editor submitted by readers.

The improved website will continue to provide content found on the current site including the "Records" category for obituaries, weddings, engagements and births.

The "Records" area will include a new subcategory providing readers with the popular weekly "Police Log" and "Court Notes" content.

In August, eNews, the electronic edition of the print newspaper, will debut on the website, giving visitors the ability to view the entire newspaper online.

Future offerings that will enhance the website include multimedia content like video clips of local people and events, expanded news categories and access to speciality publications produced by the newspaper.

Rust Communications, headquartered in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, is the parent company of the Mountain Home News, which publishes The Glenns Ferry Gazette, The Mountain Home Patriot, and Family Line.