Welcome to NewCanaanite.com. For those of you already getting our free, daily newsletter, that’s a phrase you’ll see once a week—that’s how often I intend to post a welcome to new members with a fresh rundown on content and features.
I do see our readership as a membership, because only people live in New Canaan or otherwise maintain strong ties to our town would participate in this site—reading, sharing, interacting.
Today marks just the second day that our newsletter sign-up has been available. With that, we brought a new look and feel to New Canaanite with a black-and-white photo background that features a view down Elm Street, featuring the familiar New Canaan Playhouse sign dangling over the sidewalk.
That’s a stretch of New Canaan we all recognize and associate with our town, and for me personally it captures some of the spirit of this enterprise. I called on Phil Williams and Jim O’Neill at New Canaan Music to give me a song to mark the occasion for our site’s “re-launch” and they gave the gift of this timely and great original tune (thanks guys, this means a lot—the full version can be seen here):
For content, we marked the big “re-launch” by filling (most of) the feature buckets set up on the homepage. Here’s a sample:
- 0684-Old: This is our New Canaan history feature, and Terry wrote up a great look at how the town’s iconic 9-6-6 telephone exchange developed.
- Ex-Canaanites: We connect with former residents, catch up with them and talk about their fondest experiences and memories in New Canaan. We debuted this feature with actor Kendra Munger.
- ‘New Canine-ites’: New Canaanites love their pets, so we’re devoting space to them. Meet Beaufort the Newfoundland whose owner says she can’t imagine life without him.
- REALLY?: In this feature, we document things we observe in town that make us scratch our heads and say, “REALLY?” See this video of rail commuters walking into heavy motor vehicle traffic at Park and Elm to make a morning train.
That’s a sample, and I hope our content mix is an indication that we’re making good on our covenant with our readers: To be immediate, shareable, interactive and unexpected.
Here’s information about NewCanaanite.com and here’s some information about us.