Editor's Note: Business Today recently interviewed Jon K. Rust, co-president of Rust Communications of Cape Girardeau and Media Lab director for the Southeast Missourian newspaper and Business Today magazine.

BT: When did semissourian.com go online and how is it doing?

Rust: Semissourian.com went online a little over five years ago and immediately established itself as the leading Internet site in the area. Most of the credit for its early success goes to Joni Adams, who was managing editor of the Southeast Missourian newspaper at the time. Joni is now the webmaster for Southeast Missouri Hospital.

For several years the semissourian.com site developed around special newspaper sections with only a small portion of daily news content or online-only features. One early highlight was an area of the site dedicated to the local roots of radio talk show personality Rush Limbaugh. The Rush content continues to draw interest from around the world.

After several years of climbing traffic, visitors to the site plateaued for a while, starting about two years ago. Then, in October 2000, we relaunched the site with expanded local content -- more than 100 fresh stories a day -- new interactive features, weather, discussion forums, photo features, newspaper services and much more.

BT: How much traffic does the site receive?

Rust: Semissourian.com now logs more than 3 million hits per month and climbing, and in the first seven months of 2001 we had more than 130,000 different people visit the site. To give you a sense of how explosive the overall growth is, the site runs three to five times the page views compared to the same month last year. For example, we registered more than 450,000 page views -- nearly half a million -- in July 2001. Last year we were at roughly 88,000 page views.

This kind of traffic makes semissourian.com the number one site by far in the region. Simply, nowhere else can people get the kind of comprehensive, compelling and local content that they find on semissourian.com. Particularly popular are the archives and the search functions.

BT: When was the Business Today link added?

Rust: Business Today was added as a permanent feature to the semissourian.com Website at the first of this year. We think it provides dynamic content for Web users with nearly all the features found in the print edition.

We couldn't be more pleased with the constant growth in traffic at the Business Today site. Clearly, when people try it out, they keep coming back. It's just a convenient central source for all the important information about business development and business management in the Southeast Missouri region.

BT: How do people get to the Business Today site?

Rust: The easiest way is to go to www.semissourian.com and then click on Business Today in the left navigation column.

BT: What procedures were involved in adding the link?

Rust: One of the most important aspects technically of what we're doing is piggybacking the editorial content off of the computer systems of the Southeast Missourian newspaper. We invested quite a bit of money into being able to automatically post news copy onto the Web. For the Southeast Missourian, this means we post more than 100 stories a day onto the Internet. For Business Today, it means we have the capability to place magazine editorial online without having to spend much time repurposing the content.

BT: What's the importance of automation?

Rust: Well, the fact we automate editorial means that we can then spend more time developing special online-only features. And there is much in the works along these lines for Business Today. I encourage everyone to keep checking the site. It's great now, but our webmaster, James Baughn, and Internet designer, JoAnn Boettcher, will be adding more and more each month, including special links to job recruitment features and help wanted listings.

BT: Are business stories from the Missourian also found at the Business Today site?

Rust: All the business stories of the Southeast Missourian are archived for a week or longer and can be searched for via the Business Today search function. And daily business stories appear on the Business Today site. That's why it's good for people to check it regularly.