WEB SITE AT GAME; SEE FRONT PAGES

The Southeast Missourian and semissourian.com were sponsors of the Southeast Missouri State University Indian basketball game Saturday night. Thankfully, the tribe posted a win, making it a fun night for all. I'd like to tip my hat to brother Rex, who said a few words on behalf of the Southeast Missourian at half time. The crowd was as surprised as I was when, after being handed the microphone, he began singing the Star Spangled Banner. He stopped after a few bars, but he had gained the fans' attention. His comments about the newspaper and Web site reflecting the industriousness, good deeds and positive tenor of the community are heartfelt throughout our company. This is a dynamic community, and the Southeast Missourian and its Web site are proud to serve it.

As usual, there was a slight uptick in traffic on the sports areas of semissourian.com the day after the SEMO basketball game. I'm not sure how far back this trend goes, but Web traffic over the past year indicates that Southeast Missouri State University sports is a popular area of the semissourian.com Web site. Indeed, until we revamped the site this October, the highest traffic days in the history of the site were around the Indians' inaugural trip to the NCAA tournament last March.

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Last Friday we unveiled a new graphics feature on the Web site. Visitors to semissourian.com can now see what the front page of the newspaper looks like each day.

On the home page of the site, we post a thumbnail image of the newspaper's front page. If you click on the image, it will take you to an archive of the previous week's front pages. We expect this new feature to be especially popular with users of the site who live out of town.

Perhaps looking at so many front pages all together will spark some observations on your part. It did for me. For one, the new design of the Southeast Missourian is quite striking. Credit for this goes primarily to design editor Jamie Hall, who has been experimenting with the look and feel of the newspaper since returning to Cape Girardeau and the Southeast Missourian (with his wife Heidi) this summer. But it's also been a team effort of photographers, copy editors and paginators. One of the fun aspects about the newspaper business is that experimentation with design is encouraged (at least it is with our company). After all, there is always a new palette the next day. Jamie has been pushing the design envelope at the Missourian for the past several weeks, and I believe the results are quite exciting.

Another observation you might make while looking at the online images of the newspaper is that the Web site home page usually features different stories than the newspaper front page. There are a few reasons for this variance. One is that the Web site is targeted at a younger audience than the newspaper. Second, we tend to privilege local stories on the front of the Web site, some of which might be a special feature page within the newspaper. The Southeast Missourian's Laura Johnston, for example, has written some excellent feature stories that don't usually appear on the front of the newspaper. But they are fascinating stories to read, and we give them a more prominent position on the Web site.

A third observation is that the Southeast Missourian exhibits excellent photography on a regular basis. No surprise here. Missourian photographers have been running away with state and national photo awards for many years. But the new layout shows off the photographs in bold style. Hats off to Jamie again and to photo editor Chris Stanfield and photographers Fred Lynch and Stephan Frazier.

I'm sure not everyone approves of the changes in the newspaper design. Such is the nature of change. If you don't like what you see, or if you do, feel free to let us know about it. Send me an e-mail at jrust@semissourian.com or call: (573) 335-6611, ext. 103. Or call Speak Out. And, if you didn't know already, you can also leave a Speak Out via the Web site too. Click "Opinion" on the left navigation bar of the home page, and it will take you to the editorial section of the newspaper. There are places to submit both anonymous Speak Out comments and signed letters to the editor there.

In this same section, you can also find a mini-archive of columns, editorials, letters and Speak Out comments. There is also a mini-archive of the non-opinion columnists too.

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Last week in the semissourian.com sports poll, Mark McGwire just nudged out Tiger Woods as the professional athlete semissourian.com users would most like to be for a round of competition. And, in the news poll, the nomination of John Ashcroft as attorney general was supported by 66 percent of respondents, with more than 800 votes cast.

This week's questions are: "Who do you think will win the Super Bowl?" And "What best sums up your thoughts about the new reality TV show 'Temptation Island?'"

Jon K. Rust is director of the semissourian.com MediaLab and vice president of Rust Communications.