97070.com

If this is your first visit to the Wilsonville Minute, please read this post first.

First, introductions… my name is Dan and I’m the editor of the Wilsonville Minute and President of Wilsonville Media LLC, which produces this new Wilsonville blog, dedicated to reporting up to the minute news and features, for the great town of Wilsonville, OR. We also have a very talented writer and full time reporter "on the beat." Her name is Francy and she’ll be the engine behind the reporting here at the "Minute." But the most important reporter we have is YOU, the reader.

Unlike the traditional newspaper, with a very limited space in which to convey a message, the sky is the limit here. If you live on SW Jamaica and you…

have a pot hole on your street… let’s talk about it! If you see some guy being weird in front of Albertson’s… let’s talk about it. If you saw someone being arrested on Wilsonville Rd… let’s talk about it!

The goal of this blog is to create a central location for us to share the entire experience that Wilsonville has to offer. We’ll always have links to all the school schedules, community activities, government meetings… everything you can ever want to know about Wilsonville… we’ll have it here and if we don’t, let us know where it is so we can get it.

In order to make this blog something of value to the community, though, it’ll take more than myself and Francy to do it. We need you. We can’t be at all places and at all times but you are everywhere. "You" being our readers. There’s NOTHING that can happen in this town without someone in this town knowing about it. Now we have a tool to bring all this news together. We might find out that Wisteria Lane from Desperate Housewives has nothing on Wilsonville when it comes to all that happens. Ha!

So, if you have something to report, just click on the "Contact" link above and give us all the details you have about something. If it’s relevant to Wilsonville, we’ll report it. Then when others read about it, they can comment in the comments section of that post. This creates a dialogue in which we can all participate.

You might be saying… "But we already have a new reporting outfit here." Well, technically, yes… but as great as the Wilsonville Spokesman is, it’s not very good at daily news updates since it’s a weekly publication. Plus they are limited by space. So they must pick and choose their topics. As a result, only a fraction of what goes on in Wilsonville is actually reported to the public. We want to be the place where you go each and every day to keep your finger on the pulse on what’s going on in our town.

We have some really cool plans, too. We’re going to feature homes for sale in Wilsonville, as part of our reporting. But not just a normal picture and explanation. We’ll be doing video and interview the home owners in ways that you’ll never see in traditional real estate listings. We’ll also be integrating video reporting of interviews and "person on the street" features.

How are we paying for all this? With good ‘ole fashioned advertising, that’s how. As time goes on, you’ll start to see some ads on the side bars as well as the bottom of each post. But all advertising will be from local businesses. When I say local, I mean from businesses that could reasonably expect to get business from a Wilsonville resident. So, a plumber in Tualatin would be an acceptable advertiser. However, a mortgage company in CA will not be acceptable.

In parting, I’d like to ask a favor of you. Tell someone you know about 97070.com today. Right now… email or call your friend and tell them to check out 97070.com. Community blogs like this are only effective if the entire community participates. If they don’t, it withers and dies. YOU are the lifeblood.

The future of news reporting has come to Wilsonville through the Wilsonville Minute. I’m very happy and proud to be a part of this process.

I’m excited! I hope you are too. See you ’round town. I’ll be the one in an orange shirt. (I’ll explain that in a future post!)