Welcome to the newly revamped Northfield.org
See our snarky FAQ for some of what we've got going on
Tracy and Griff’s Bad Hair Day introduction video (2 minutes, 47 seconds; closed captions in many languages available):
In early 2022, Northfield.org went dormant after nearly 30 years of operation. Shortly thereafter, Tracy Davis Heisler and Griff Wigley, two of the original co-founders of the parent non-profit, Northfield Citizens Online, started leading the effort to revive the site. What you see today is only the beginning because, as a community journalism public service, the real work begins now with your involvement—the citizens of Northfield and the surrounding area.
The snarky FAQ:
The area already has KYMN, the Northfield News, and social media. Isn’t that enough?
No. There are at least two important gaps: 1. A place for civil online conversations about important issues. 2. A place where any citizen can contribute content using any combination of text, audio, photos, and video for the entire community to see.You’re promising civil conversations? What are you smoking?
We think people will quickly adapt once a culture of civility is established through rigorous enforcement. We have some unusually strict Civility Rules, some of which this question breaks.Will any Northfield area leaders participate, or will it just be citizens wasting time yakking with each other?
We won’t ask leaders to participate until we’ve established a culture of civility. Once that happens, we think many leaders will engage in time-limited discussions here. And citizens discussing issues with one another is not always yakking. It can be a time-honored, effective way to learn about issues while having fun getting to know people better.If this is a place where citizens can contribute, why is nearly everything authored by that geezer Griff guy?
The site went live quietly in early May. Griff, the managing editor, has been privately experimenting with various types of posts since last fall. It will take a while for us to ramp up with contributed content from many non-geezer types.I see you have paid subscription options. What happened to the volunteer-run model?
We don’t think it’s sustainable at a level of volume and quality that will fill those gaps we mentioned above. Our first-year plan calls for two half-time staff positions and a dozen paid part-time editorial contributors. We’ll adopt a revenue strategy similar to public radio: voluntary paid subscriptions (memberships), grants, donations, and sponsorships.Looking around the site, everything is about Northfield. Why have you neglected Dundas, adjacent townships, or Rice County issues?
It’s Griff’s fault for living a cloistered life in town for 50 years. He needs help from people like you to widen our scope. Are you willing to pitch in?No, I’m too busy updating a list of everything I see that sucks. Do you want to know what I’m finding?
We sure do. This will be a never-ending work in progress in which we constantly fix problems and try new things. Comment publicly on this or any of our posts in the Behind the Scenes at NCO section, or visit our Contact Us page.Why doesn’t your site have a better name? Northfield.org is a web address, in case you haven’t noticed.
In the early years of the web, we used the name Northfield Citizens Online (NCO) and the domain name nco.northfield.mn.us. The Northfield News used the domain name northfield.org for a general-purpose community site. In the summer of 2000, we cybersquatted the domain name northfieldnews.com and then convinced them to swap it with us for northfield.org. We were so happy we started using northfield.org as our name with the same logo you see today. If you don’t believe this story, you can look up northfield.org on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. And check out our page on the history of NCO, Northfield.org and Locally Grown Northfield. Some old photos there!What’s with the Snotfield News satire section? And why is it behind a paywall?
Many decades ago, the Northfield News did a few satirical April Fools Day editions of the paper called the Northfield Snooze. In more recent years, the Locally Grown Northfield blog regularly published ‘faux news’ posts. We like the idea of taking satirical pokes at people and institutions in the context of contemporary culture, politics, and other topical issues. The Snotfield News satire section (“You might think it's news, but it's not”) is behind a paywall to keep the content away from internet search engine web crawlers and AI data scrapers. And it helps draw a harder boundary between actual news and that which is, um, not. If anyone wants a paid subscription but can’t afford it, Contact Us, and we’ll consider comping you one.What else is important to know so I don’t have to keep bugging you?
The archive of all posts in the news section (18 as of today) is accessible from the main menu at the top of the home page. The Behind the Scenes and Snotfield News sections have their own archives.
Notes are like tweets on steroids. You can access our Notes feed from the main menu. This Note provides more details.
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Thanks so much for stopping by!
