First let me welcome you to this website. As you can see, this is the first blog entry for the site, which I am writing about 24 hours before the official launch of the site. Needless to say, myself and the team here at Maine Web FX are excited for the launch, which we hope will in some small well help the newspaper industry come to full stride on the web.

But the question we keep getting from people (in regard to the launch) is, "why newspapers?"

It's true that we have a web design firm that runs the gamut for design and programming already. The firm does everything from e-commerce to real estate. But our passion has always been newspapers.

Starting out as a reporter at the Brattleboro Reformer in Vermont, I had my share of great stories to cover. When the excitement waned, I moved to Phoenix, where I worked for a weekly newspaper covering cops and crime before working at a daily ... covering much of the same.

It wasn't all that long ago, really. When I started, the newspaper didn't even have a website. When it got one, the staff didn't know what to do with it. There was much debate on whether front page stories should make it to the site. It was decided that the "good" articles were meant for print only.

I remember having a problem with that. I thought that the web could serve as a way to get the news out quickly. But my opinions were cut short. It wasn't my place to tell the IT department (Curt), what to do. I went back to my desk and wrote about a recent crime spree for the print edition.

Now, eight years later and five years after leaving the paper, they hired me to find ways to increase their web presence. I'm glad they did.

Then there was the newspaper I worked for as an advertising rep. That newspaper had a website. It was one that had no ads, and two articles per week added. It was then that I decided something better was needed. I talked to the publisher and the rest is history. The site now gets more than 100,000 unique visitors a month and brings in thousands of dollars in ad revenue per month. Not bad since it used to average 50 hits a month.

The phone calls we get from newspapers now are filled with confusion. There is so much to learn when making the jump from print to online media. There are companies out there that further the confusion, giving newspapers little information, bloated prices and not much to work with.

We wanted to be different. And we will be different. Our pricing reflects, what we believe to be very economical ways to build (or rebuild) a web presence that will exponentially further and build your market share.

Our staff knows the newspaper industry from every aspect: reporting, advertising and production. We care about newspapers and want them to survive. We believe that the newspaper industry is not dead ... not even close. The newspaper is on the leading edge of something that can be very exciting in the coming years. It will be a brand-new day for them: a day that merges print and online mediums into one.

Like the dawn of publications, this is a great time to be in the newspaper industry and the perfect time to bring a cutting edge website to the forefront of each newspaper in the United States.

So, why newspapers? Because they are there, and we want to ensure they will be there for a century to come.