I'll be away on vacation until July 30, but please use this space to post your thoughts about the new MaineToday.com, or other aspects of our sites. There's a brief explanation of the changes
here.
Rest assured that I'm not the only one in our organization who is paying attention to what you say here, so speak up. If I can get internet access where I'm vacationing, I may post something. (Or not -- hey, I'm on vacation.) See you on the 30th.

Howard Owens, well known around the newspaper online world, blogged about the new MaineToday.com design yesterday. He is Director of Digital Publishing at Gatehouse Media, which owns a large group of newspapers and websites around Boston, as well as nationwide. Howard formerly was head of online at the Bakersfield Californian.

If you have any interest in online newspaper stuff, especially video and "citizen media," I highly recommend Howard's writings.

Give this entry a read and share your thoughts. (Cut him some slack for omitting the "e" in MaineToday, though)

Getting to a couple of points raised in comments to this blog, and privately:

Q: Why is the new MaineToday.com logo just on the home page, but the old one is all over the place elsewhere?
A: The new logo will roll out over the next few weeks. There are over 200,000 pages on the entire Blethen Maine Newspapers network, so some pages could have the old MT logo for a month or more.

Q: If the MaineToday.com brand is separating from the newspaper brands, why the continuing dominant MT branding on the newspaper sites?
A: That will change this week. Check it out and send feedback.

Q: Why make it so hard to "bounce back and forth" between MT and the newspaper sites?
A: Good question. The intention isn't to make it hard, but the design challenge is to work within a small space. We'll be listening to feedback to see if there's a better solution.

Keep the feedback coming ....

Thanks to you all who have been sending feedback, individually and to this blog.

A few themes come out:
1. The Press Herald is making a big mistake in not highlighting news
2. Love the new design
3. Hate the new design
4. Something is not working

Taking them one at a time:
1. The Press Herald is not MaineToday.com, and vice versa. The biggest reason for making these changes is to refocus and expand our journalism under the PressHerald.com brand, and refocus and expand "non-journalism" under the MaineToday.com brand.
2. Thank you for writing. It's a group effort. Axon Marketing helped us develop the new logo, and the overall look-and-feel is by our designer Wendy Clark, with lots of other folks involved in the planning and development.
3. Thank you for writing. We take all feedback seriously. I can't promise anything will change, but the more specific you are, the more we can take it into our decisionmaking.
4. There are a few bugs, so please keep reporting them, and we'll keep fixing them.

Cool, huh? The MaineToday.com home page is totally redesigned. (Remember, if you're looking for news, go to our newspaper sites.) This design eventually will extend to the other MaineToday.com sections, though not the newspaper sites, which will get their own fresh looks. Share your impressions below. Tomorrow I'll write a bit about the thinking behind this, and answer some of your questions.

As our newspaper brands become the focus of Blethen Maine Newspapers' journalism mission online, you'll see an expanded focus on "community connections" under the MaineToday.com brand.

Here's a great example, in which someone is seeking to reconnect former students of South Portland's Redbank School:
Kids who attended Redbank School
It's posted by member Suzan Roberts Norton. Her profile page has more stories and photos about Redbank.

Maybe I noticed Suzan's story because I grew up not far from Redbank, and I recall Redbank as a tight-knit family community, not that different from my own neighborhood in Thornton Heights. With all the commercial development surrounding both those neighborhoods now, I too wonder if that community atmosphere will endure, or if former residents will be able to reclaim old connections.

Maybe this is one way we can help.

Jeannine Guttman, editor of the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram, used her column today to explore the changes happening to the PressHerald.com and MaineToday.com sites, both public and behind-the-scenes.
The occasion: today is the first day that the Press Herald newsroom is fully hands-on and responsible for the PressHerald.com site. Jeannine asked me for some thoughts about this period in our evolution, and I'm quoted in her piece.
Your thoughts?