Melissa Babcock
Welcome to zip06
It's February 28--the launch date of zip06.com.
We hope you've seen the announcements and ads in your Times paper and found your way here.
While the original Times Community site provided an online outlet for our articles, it didn’t truly expand the reach of our weekly publications and was more of a static, digital version of the pages in our papers. The new sites are developed to resemble TheDay.com in content, pictures, audio, and blogs and are marketed as zip06.com, referring to the first two numbers of every zip code in Connecticut, as you probably recognized.
The zip06 site has been created as a dynamic extension of our publications, granting greater access to the communities of southeastern Connecticut, and, like our department title, they provide a means for community members to interact and connect with one another.
As Interactive Department Director Derek Anderson mentioned in his announcement on page 4 of all the Times papers last week, the new community site will still feature the in-depth, town-specific articles found in our weekly papers but will also offer a widely expanded and very interactive forum for you to create a free membership profile and submit photos, news, and post comments to the articles written by your town reporter.
Select submissions will be further explored by our editors and reporters for possible development into stories for our weekly papers. If you have information that you want to share with your neighbors and friends, we want to provide a customized, convenient forum for you to do so within the information categories—member blogs, event listings, and photo galleries—featured on zip06.
Today is the official release date. Ultimately, these sites will be defined by their users, while our roles will be largely centered on moderating and facilitating. We invite you to make a profile and become acquainted with your new community Web sites. We’re approaching the initial release as a work in development, with the final tweaks to be added by you, the public, in the spirit of participatory architecture.
Contact me with any questions at m.babcock@theday.com or 440-1023.
Melissa Babcock
Interactive Desk Chief
The Times Community News Group