Expanding Compass

This week the Opinion and Viewpoint pages have moved to the first section of our two-section paper to give us the opportunity to expand Compass coverage. 

Compass is where we chronicle Arts and Entertainment news and features, and starting with this edition we will add Lifestyle to its coverage, labeling it “Arts, Entertainment and Lifestyle.” 

We also think that the Opinion and Viewpoint pages, which include the Editorial, letters from readers and columns, are more at home in the first section of the paper with our community news and features. 

We have long wanted to expand Compass’ offerings to include coverage of the many lifestyle activities and events that make our lives richer here in the Northwest Corner and beyond. 

While we are shuffling some pages around and putting a focus on lifestyle, we are not changing anything that’s already here. We still will provide you with an Editorial each week, and will print the “Letters to the Editor.” We also will retain the popular “Turning Back the Pages” column written by Norma Bosworth. We also will continue to feature cartoons and photographs. 

The biggest change to be noticed is that Compass will have a broader mandate, and will reflect not only arts and entertainment in our communities, but also life as we are living it. Please take a look and let us know what you think.

A few months ago we started including a calendar of events on the Viewpoint page. We plan to keep that going, of course, and it will stay in the rebranded “Arts, Entertainment and Lifestyle” Compass section of the paper. We recognize that the Calendar is a feature that readers want, and our plans include expanding it as much as possible. 

We are also busy getting ready to launch a new website by the end of this month that we hope readers will find useful and informative. We plan to give readers a fresher site by putting stories up online with more frequency throughout the week. We won’t become a daily newspaper, but when important news breaks, we plan to get it to you on a timely basis.  

Often when the topic of “online news” comes up, readers ask if we are going to end printing The Lakeville Journal as a newspaper. The answer is a definite “no.” The plan is to continue with a print edition, while offering readers a more modern experience on their computer screens and phones. We also intend to continue to feed our social media outlets: Facebook and Instagram. 

We met our match!

Good news! A group of key supporters and Lakeville Journal Foundation board members pledged a total of $100,000 as a matching challenge, and we have now met that match.

To those of you who contributed, thank you! Your willingness to double your contribution through our matching campaign is an inspiration. We are truly grateful for your support, and we want you to know that your donation will make a meaningful difference to our efforts to expand and improve our town and community coverage.

If you have any questions or would like to stay connected, please feel free to reach out at publisher@lakevillejournal.com or (860) 435-9873. We value your feedback.

We’ll list the names of everyone who’s participated in the Nov. 9 issue of both papers. It’s exciting to have so many readers pitching in!