On Jan. 11, a group of 12 government, education and human-service agencies launched Springfieldsource.org, featuring stories from the participating agencies. Michael Brothers is site editor, one of his roles as special projects coordinator for Springfield's Public Information Department.
Q: How did the idea of Springfieldsource.org come develop?
A: Basically, we had several institutions that wanted to come together and have a way that we could get information, headlines and our messages out directly to citizens. ... A handful of people got together and kind of started brainstorming how we could do that, and we knew we wanted to have a presence on the Web with it. We just kind of tweaked it and we ran it by a couple of groups, some of our employee groups, and we also had a couple of focus groups with The Network from the (Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce). One of the things we wanted to do was make sure that if we were going to do this, that it would be friendly to a younger demographic.
Q: Site users can sign up to receive biweekly e-newsletters, for which 500 people registered the first week. Was an e-newsletter always in the plan?
A: We know that a lot of people do like getting those e-mail newsletters. And, just to be honest, the (Springfield Business Journal Daily Update) is one that a lot of people around town get, and it works. Other media organizations have that as well. We just wanted to offer a way that the information could come to them.
Q: How do you decide on the site content?
A: We have a couple of point people at each of the organizations, and they'll send me the information. ... Our main stories (are) going to get changed out every two weeks at this point. ... The stuff they send me is a little bit evergreen, and it's things that they want out there. An example might be the county assessor's office at the end of the year really wants to remind people about their tax statements. ... It could be a breaking news item. It just runs the gamut; it depends on what those organizations want to send me. But then, we can't necessarily get everything in there, so that's where I have some leeway. ... I will ultimately make some judgment calls.
Q: So the feature stories are changed every two weeks. How often will changes occur with other content, like the Newsflash stories that scroll across the top of the page?
A: I hope to change (Newsflash) out every few days. And then there's this page with the recent headlines and RSS feeds, and that gets updated as often as those organizations update their news feeds. Theoretically, in the recent headline feeds, you have stuff that is coming from all the organizations on a daily basis.
Q: How did you come up with 12 partner organizations?
A: We just wanted to keep it to some of the major civic and public organizations in town. ... We decided to have some umbrella organizations in there as well, which is why you see United Way and the Community Foundation in there. Because they really, between those two, touch a lot of nonprofit organizations around town, and any nonprofit organization that is affiliated with those two organizations, (now can) get their information onto the Springfield Source site.[[In-content Ad]]
