Welcome

The News of Orange County is starting the new year off with more online features in an effort to not only provide additional content and multimedia, but to improve the way in which we communicate with our readership as a whole.
To that end, Vanessa and I decided we needed to go beyond recreating the weekly newspaper's content in its online form, so we're offering this as a way for us to communicate with readers in a less formal fashion. In the print product, what you know about us and what we do each week is largely constricted to bylines and photo captions. With Hillsborough Newsroom (the newsroom is at 109 E. King St. in downtown Hillsborough, and we didn't have any other bright ideas when asked to commit to a name), we're trying to provide more about what's going to be in the paper while it's in progress and to share some things that might not necessarily make the print product.
Other online features that should be rolled out by the time next week's issue hits the racks:

• More photo galleries — We take way, way more pictures than what makes the paper. Sometimes, it's to the tune of 25-30:1 in terms of what we take versus what is published; print space is finite. Often, we'll have 10-15 usable photos and 4-5 that we really like, but only one will make it in. This is a way to share our photos and to allow for you to buy them if you like them.
More details to come as we get links set up to the service that hosts the photos.
• Front page PDF — After we finish the paper on Tuesday night, we'll throw a PDF file of our front page online so people have some idea of what's coming.
• Integrating polls with the print product — Each week, we'll have a poll question online that will be similar to the question we ask for Perspectives that appears in next week's paper. That's the thing where you see one of us around town with a camera, stopping people on the streets.
(For us, the week begins on Wednesday morning when we post that week's paper online and ends Tuesday night when the next issue is off to the printer. Just to clarify.)
• Story commenting — By next week, we'll have our stories opened up for registered users to comment. This blog, hopefully, can duplicate the function of feedback online.

These are a batch of bells and whistles we've added to a site that lately hadn't seen many updated features. Let us know your thoughts.