The past week was an eventful one.
Voters headed to the polls for elections that ended up with some surprise results. We won’t know how it all will work out until our newly elected officials settle down to business with our reelected incumbents.
Last weekend our communities also came out to celebrate Veterans Day, gathering for ceremonies at public memorial sites. Assemblies were held in elementary schools, where students expressed their gratitude and respect for our service vets.
As voters, we are primed to want to know the results of an election as soon as possible. Our curiosity is magnified when we begin to hear that some elections were upsets. As families, we value the recognition accorded to our veterans, and look forward to the images of our youth presenting a thankyou message to a vet, or to see a gathering of our neighbors around a war memorial with American flags waving in the air on this annual day of remembrance — part of our lives since the end of World War I.
This week The Lakeville Journal provides a rundown of last week’s elections, and our reporters write about Veterans Day events across the region. But we didn’t wait to tell you about what happened on Election Day. On Election Night we worked late to post results as soon as they became available, first on our Instagram account @lakevillejournal. Managing Editor Riley Klein created quick summaries of races in all the towns: Salisbury, Kent, Cornwall, Sharon, North Canaan and Falls Village. Flipping through the pages of each post leads to photos of the winning Selectmen. The Instagram posts were followed by longer writeups the next day on tricornernews.com, our website.We updated the outcome of elections for commissions and boards and other municipal posts.
As a printed weekly newspaper, we adhere to a seven-day cycle. Every Tuesday around noon we send our paper off to the printer in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. But as we have done for some time, when big news happens we get it out to you as fast as we can. We know that our readers are looking for their news on smartphones, computers and tablets. We have no plans to end print publication. This week’s paper has full-page coverage of the 2023 election and Veterans Day events. But we are stepping up to provide our readers a better news feed throughout the week on the kind of platform that has become the go-to source for news by more than eight out of ten American adults.
To meet readers more frequently on this dominant news turf The Journal is getting ready to unveil revamped websites later this month.
The new websites will be called lakevillejournal.com and millertonnews.com. We also will drop the paywall, meaning access to the news no longer will be restricted to those who subscribe. The goal is to offer a digital news feed on your digital device more than once a week and to reach more readers.
While residents of Litchfield County and eastern Dutchess County live under different governing arrangements, there is abundant cross-border interest in the rest of what life has to offer. Each paper will have its own identity on its unique website, and the two sites will be linked so readers can digitally “cross the border,” just as they frequently do now in everyday life.
Thanks to your continued support, we are preserving the heritage of a weekly newspaper and updating our digital feed to better meet you where you look for news.
