Screenshot of the Walton Reporter's new website at waltonreporter.com.
Congratulations to the Walton Reporter on rolling out their new website this week.
The paper, which covers a wide swath of Delaware County along with their Walton home base, has been making forays into the digital world for some time, posting sneak previews and PDFs of the current front page on their Facebook wall. Today, the paper unveiled their fully-functional new website.
At first glance, it looks clean and user-friendly, with a simple layout, RSS feeds for different kinds of stories, and a local event calendar. Access to full stories is subscription-only.
It looks like the Reporter is running its own comment system, moderated by the staff. We hope they know what they're in for. From our experience, keeping comment sections from being overwhelmed by spam and general nastiness can be a serious challenge for online news outlets, especially without some kind of real-name verification for commenters. (After much wrestling with this ourselves, we eventually switched to a Facebook comment system as a way to ensure most readers used their real names.)
Don't look for daily reporting here, though we will certainly post breaking news in the event of emergencies or major events. Major updates of the site will occur on Wednesday mornings, to coincide with the publication of the paper. Of course, the website offers things the paper can't, such as all of our pictures in color and the option for readers to comment on stories. We're looking forward to that.
Welcome to cyberspace, Walton Reporter. Glad you've joined the party.
