What’s new? We’ve revamped the home page to emphasize our original journalism. The aggregated report will be collected into a single post, which will be linked in the upper right and updated each weekday morning. The “Highwire” blog is going away, instead all new content — news stories, blog posts, opinion pieces — will be posted to the home page.

Why? The analytics showed us that as our editorial mission evolved, our original layout was no longer as effective as it could be. We track the number of clickthroughs on each link we post, and the majority of those clicks now come from our daily email digest. Meanwhile, traffic to our original reporting was limited in part because it was hard to find and tended to rotate off the homepage after a day or two.

Will I still get my daily email? Yes! In fact, by avoiding the duplication of labor involved with posting headlines to the homepage, the email digest now comes out at 8 a.m. (CT). The contents of the daily email will be posted to the website shortly thereafter.

But I liked the old version better! Anytime you change a website, it’s not going to be well-received by everyone. Please be assured that these are data-driven changes intended to streamline the user experience and make better use of our limited staffing resources. That said, we welcome any and all feedback – please contact me at paulman@energynews.us with any questions, suggestions or concerns.

Ken is the director of the Energy News Network at Fresh Energy and is a founding editor of both Midwest Energy News and Southeast Energy News. Prior to joining Fresh Energy, he was the managing editor for online news at Minnesota Public Radio. He started his journalism career in 2002 as a copy editor for the Duluth News Tribune before spending five years at the Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington, where he worked as a copy editor, online producer, features editor and night city editor. A Nebraska native, Ken has a bachelor's degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a master's degree from the University of Oregon. He is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists and Investigative Reporters and Editors.

2 replies on “A Q&A about the new Midwest Energy News”