FORT CARSON, Colo. -- In its 72nd year of publication, the Mountaineer is set to jump into the 21st century with a unique tool that can bring important news about Fort Carson directly to you.
Some people may have noticed a change to the printed newspaper in recent weeks, with some changes in design and regular features. Most noticeable is that the Mountaineer now has every page in full color and it's printed on "hi-brite" stark white paper. An added benefit is that this paper is made from post-consumer recycled paper, a requirement put into the contract for production of the newspaper to align with Fort Carson's Net Zero goals. And Family housing residents have probably noticed newspapers are no longer delivered to their door -- which often led to papers blowing across the housing area. They now are located in durable, weatherproof newsstands near mailbox clusters.
But the biggest change launched this week -- the Mountaineer is now digital with an online publication that can be found at http://www.fortcarsonmountaineer.com.
The online publication is a fully interactive website with a mobile application available for smartphones and tablets in the near future. It features the Fort Carson Twitter feed; a box for breaking news; notices sent out in the Community Emails that previously only reached those logged in on a government computer; featured stories from the print edition; online classified ads; and other new sections that include a photo of the day, history highlights and sustainability tips.
The Twitter feed will show the latest posts to the official Fort Carson and 4th Infantry Division Twitter pages. Since the Twitter pages are linked to the official Facebook pages, those posts also can be seen on the website.
The breaking news box, called Front and Center, will feature items from the Community Email, such as holiday office closures, event or class cancellations and upcoming events on Fort Carson. This will also feature stories that arrive too late for the print edition deadline -- or that we simply couldn't fit because of space constraints.
The featured stories on the online publication will offer the ability for readers to comment on the article. Because of the unique nature of life in a military community -- and for operations security reasons -- the comments will be on a delay until the members of the Public Affairs Office can review for OPSEC violations, such as a comment on a specific date when a loved one or unit is returning from deployment. As with our social media pages, the comments must follow the posting policy that will be listed on the page -- no hateful or extremist, vulgar or obscene comments will be allowed.
The online classified ads will be free for Soldiers, Family members and retirees, as long as the ads are not for a privately owned business.
A section that is exclusive to the online publication will be the photo of the day. Some of the photos will be those that our staff takes while on assignment. But primarily, we hope this will be a section that features photos sent in from our community members with a description of what's happening and full names of those in the photo. Send your photos to editor@fortcarsonmountaineer.com for consideration to run as photo of the day.
The Mountaineer online will also offer the ability for people to sign up for free alerts on breaking news.
This is a very new concept for an Army publication, and we want it to be successful in providing news that affects you. We would appreciate your feedback on what we can do better or on the features you like.
We're able to get important information out to many people on post through the Mountaineer printed edition, Community Emails, http://www.carson.army.mil and social media. Informing our community members of important policy changes, weather conditions and even upcoming events they may be interested in is one of our most important missions. We hope the online publication becomes your main source of information, delivering news you can use via the website, the mobile app or alerts that send the news directly to your mobile device.
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