Gazette has new look on the Internet

Harry Strunk, founder of the McCook Daily Gazette, was known as an innovator, who was not afraid to try something new.

The most famous example was the Newsboy, the 1929 Curtiss Robin airplane, which plied the skies of Southwest Nebraska and Northwest Kansas, delivering the newspaper by airdrop. Although that experiment was cut short by a tornado, the plane was restored and is now on exhibit in Seattle.

Nearly 80 years later, the job the Newsboy performed in three hours requires a fleet of small cars several more hours to complete.

But Strunk was constantly seeking ways to obtain and deliver the news more efficiently, whether through early experiments with fax-like machines, to other forms of automation.

Now the newspaper is carrying on that tradition.

Since the turn of the latest century, the Gazette, like most other newspapers, has had a "presence" on the Internet, at http://mccookgazette.com.

World Wide Web surfers may have noticed Friday, however, that the site has taken on a new look.

Still located at mccookgazette.com, the new site offers a number of exciting updated features, such as a scrolling feature story box, locally-produced video as well as video provided by The Associated Press, and a revival of the Gazette's "man-on-the-street" feature, this time called, logically enough, "On the street."

The site has always made it easy for readers and contributors to get in touch with the paper, but the new site takes it much farther.

There are now opportunities to respond to individual stories and opinion columns, as well as contribute items to the community calendar and use the same page to plan your own schedule.

If that includes taking in a movie, there's a schedule as well as locally-written reviews.

And, for the photographically inclined, there is the chance to contribute their own photos for others to enjoy, and the chance to order, online, copies of photos produced by the Gazette staff itself.

Not only conventional photographs, but the images can be ordered on products ranging from mouse pads to puzzles to picture mugs and magnets.

Plus, check out the local "blogs" -- Web logs -- new local online columns written by Amy Strauch, Nate James, Lori Savery Hinze and Doreen Parsons, with more coming.

And, while the site retains the many free features it already had, and adds many more, keep a lookout for a new electronic method of delivering the entire print version of the paper that is on its way.

We think old Harry would have been proud.