Semissourian.com will change; we want you to know well in advance

In December we lost a good friend and cherished colleague: James Baughn, webmaster for the Southeast Missourian and Rust Communications. James was a remarkable individual — history writer and hiking blogger, satirist and bridge chronicler — who for 20 years designed and evolved the digital architecture for more than 30 Rust newspaper websites in eight states. While maintaining the system that James built, we have been deliberating whether to continue to support it, contract with a full-service third party or assemble and develop our own new, cutting-edge tech stack.

As most will intrinsically understand, this is a big decision, as it impacts the newspaper's ability to serve the community in what is more and more a digital world. One decision path represents lower immediate risk, but certain drawbacks. The other path: higher risk, but in our vision, a better product — and improved experience — for you.

Thanks in part to a grant from social media giant Facebook (which has been seeking ways to encourage local news providers with targeted support), we decided to build as much of the tech stack ourselves, employing the latest, best code.

For you, this means a new, faster, smarter website and enhanced, intuitive mobile experience are coming. The target launch date is November.

At this point, I don't want to share too much about the platform itself. It still will go through many changes, and it's the underlying architecture (rather than the "skin") that we're finalizing now. Instead, I want to invite any of you who want to be part of the process to join us in this redesign. We are looking for caring and curious individuals who want to have access to prototypes of the site early: to give feedback and to make suggestions. If you are interested, please sign up at www.semissourian.com/thefuture, and we will be in touch.

In the meantime, we understand that a technology platform is vital to our future. But even more important is for us to continue to provide (and to enhance) the quality local journalism — and the connections via births and deaths, weddings, commerce, events, sports, food and so much more — that helps this community thrive. We take that responsibility seriously. We're proud to serve you every day. And we thank you for your support.

Over the next few months, I look forward to updating you about the development of the Southeast Missourian's new platform. In addition, if you are a service club or any organization that wants a presentation about the site — from its business model and strategy behind its design to how best to use it — please contact Jamie at jphillips@rustmedia.com. Assistant publisher Lucas Presson and I are starting to schedule talks, kicking off in October.

Again, thank you for your support. We are excited to build something special, and we welcome your prayers and well wishes.

Jon K. Rust is publisher of the Southeast Missourian.