Commentary
By Gary Kopycinski
Don’t look now, but eNews Park Forest turns 9 sometime this fall.
Nine.
9.
Launched in the fall of 2006, sometime after I lost another erstwhile election (go ahead, rub it in), sometime after I spent the summer researching deeply web design, content management systems, journalism (still researching all of those) and more, our very first article was published on September 29, 2006: Welcome to eNewsPF.com.
There’s a blast from the past.
As I wrote in 2006, “Many people have expressed displeasure with the quality of news coverage for Park Forest. Our goal is to change all of that.”
We have worked constantly through the years, daily, to change all of that, to replace the “dead tree” publications that used to cover Park Forest and other communities.
What’s a “dead tree?”
A “dead tree” is another blast from the past, the ol’ traditional newspaper that was printed on dead trees, the ol’ traditional newspaper that missed the Web, gave the news away for free, wrote headlines for print when the news went to the Web.
In short, the “dead tree” is going, going…?
All told, eNews Park Forest has published over 62,000 articles in that nine year period since our first article was published. Many of those articles were press releases that have long since been deleted, but we currently have over 49,000 articles indexed with Google.
Many of them, thanks to Rosemary Piser, who came on board shortly after I launched eNews Park Forest.
Rosemary has worked almost constantly to post stories that have drawn readers from around the world. When contacted by other news organizations (yes, we’re a news organization), we commonly receive comments about how much we do, how much we have done, with the number of people we have publishing.
One of the primary forces behind all of that is Rosemary Piser, who, while currently living abroad, still publishes daily to ENEWSPF, thanks to the wonder of the World Wide Web.
We are also grateful to Wendy Heise of Wish Photography. Wendy was our first “official” photographer, and we helped launch her career by offering her virtually free advertising in exchange for her coverage of important events.
One of the most telling events Wendy covered for us was a tornado that struck close to home: Tornado Scars Richton Park. She wrote the story. She took the photos.
We wish her continued success.
Alan Edrinn was our first — and, to this date, only — college intern. For a complete listing of Alan’s contributions to eNews Park Forest, please go here: http://ow.ly/Ojt4l.
For the record, my favorite contribution from Alan, albeit the most somber, is this: NIU Still Healing Following Cole Hall Shootings.
A blast from the past?
Alan’s commentary was the 1,735th article published on eNews Park Forest.
And well worth reading.
We’ve been around for almost nine, 9, years.
But we would not be here without our advertisers.
You may not like advertising, but we have relied almost completely on local advertisers, those in Park Forest, since we launched in 2006.
And we did not demand subscriptions to read our content.
Much of this may change in the days and weeks ahead, but we will remain committed to covering Park Forest, Illinois.
Finally, thank you, our readers, for standing with us through the years.
We are not a “dead tree.”
And, contrary to the laments of some, perhaps, we ARE the “newspaper” covering Park Forest, Illinois.
We are the living, breathing pulse of Park Forest, Illinois.
And we anticipate a long, long future covering the news.
Gary Kopycinski is editor and publisher of eNews Park Forest. Follow him on Twitter at @GaryKopycinski and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/FrodoJRR, or email him at [email protected]. He served as a village trustee in Park Forest from 2003-2006, and then again from 2007-2015. eNews Park Forest, Inc. is an independent media company and is not affiliated with the Village of Park Forest in any way.
