RALEIGH – By now I trust you’ve noticed Carolina Journal’s new online look. We hope you find our expanded and redesigned site to be interesting, informative, and easy to navigate. Let me give you the highlights and explain some of the new functions.
First, you’ll notice our column widths and color schemes have changed a bit. In part we were simply updating a CJO design that had been in place for nearly a decade. It was, if you’ll pardon the expression, time for a change. But we were also seeking to improve the functionality of the site by giving you more links as jumping-off points – more articles, more editorials, more columns, and real-time feeds from the Locker Room and our five regional blogs (devoted to the Triangle, the Triad, the Charlotte area, Western NC and Southeastern NC). As we add more regional sites (the Sandhills region is up next in the queue), more blog feeds will appear.
Next, you’ll see that there are three tabs near the top of the page that allow you to toggle between on Carolina Journal Online news page, our CJ Radio page, and our new CJ Television page.
On the CJO news page, you’ll still find handy summaries and links each weekday to the best North Carolina politics and public-policy coverage we can find. CJ Associate Editor Michael Lowrey, who’s always been a bit of a night owl, works into the wee hours finding the best news stories, editorials, and columns from the state’s major media organizations on the issues of the day. Of course, each weekday you’ll also find exclusive stories from Carolina Journal correspondents and a “Daily Journal” opinion column, usually but not always by me.
On the CJ Radio page, you’ll find a summary of the segments featured in the most-recent edition of our weekend newsmagazine. You can look down the list of our 19 network stations to find a broadcast near you or download the hourlong podcast directly from the site. Co-hosts Mitch Kokai and Donna Martinez bring you coverage of the General Assembly and state government, discussions with public officials and policy experts, and interviews with noted authors, journalists, professors, and opinion leaders.
On the CJ TV page, you’ll find a variety of video content. There are brief interviews with newsmakers and JLF policy analysts, live-to-tape coverage of government proceedings and press conferences, excerpts and full-length presentations from recent JLF events, and outtakes from TV newscasts and discussion programs that we think you will find informative and entertaining.
And of course, you can always visit the archives of the Carolina Journal print edition to look at recent or back issues of the paper. Some of the print content appears as CJO stories or is the subject of CJ Radio and TV coverage – but not all of it. So if the website leaves you wanting more, by all means let us know and we’ll put you on the mailing list for our monthly, 28-page print edition.
Over the past decade, we’ve worked hard to make Carolina Journal one of the mostly widely read, heard, and viewed media services in North Carolina. Every month, we reach about 130,000 monthly readers in print, 40,000 radio and podcast listeners, and 100,000 unique monthly visitors to CJO and related websites. Our guest columns reach another 700,000+ newspaper readers each week. It’s a start.
Please feel free to contact me ([email protected]) if you have any comments about our new online design, questions about Carolina Journal, or suggestions about how we can better serve politically active and engaged North Carolinians from the mountains to the coast.
Thanks for reading, and come back soon.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation