Well, well. It was OnTheWight’s ninth birthday on Sunday. Nine years since Sally stood out in the cold on Ventnor Cascade and videoed an unexploded bomb, being, errr, exploded in the Haven in Ventnor, back in 2005 (it even received BBC coverage with our video being used).
We had no idea back then that we’d be spending quite so much time every day on what’s grown into OnTheWight. The original idea was just to have a bit of fun and write about things that interested us around the Island, but it wasn’t long before our readers asked if we could start to cover Isle of Wight news.
Innovating where we can
If you’re a regular reader you’ll know that here at OnTheWight – beyond our near-obsession with Openness and Transparency in our reporting – innovation and new ways of delivering Island news is what really drives us.
We discovered recently that it appears we were the first Hyperlocal news publication that was archived by the British Library. Imagine that – all that news about the Isle of Wight (and chatter on the VB Forum) stored by the British Library for evermore.
We also seem to have been the first local news publication in the UK to cover a council meeting live online, way back in February 2007.
Of course, this is now not unusual across the UK, with national papers covering events live, mostly on Twitter these days – with even other IW media doing the same :)
Most recently, we’ve made some changes with the way we report live, which went down well with you all.
New speedier mobile version
Talking of the new, we’ve got few new things on the way, one of which will be appearing shortly – a new mobile version of our news Website (being developed/built using a skills swap via the innovative Ventnor Timebank).
For over two years (since we re-branded) the main news site has had a version that automatically resized for mobile phones, but that wasn’t quite enough – we knew we could do better.
Lots of work has gone into it – all with the sole purpose of making reading OnTheWight a more pleasurable experience, for all of you (increasingly large numbers) of mobile users.
We will, of course let you know when it’s ready for use.
Love from our community
And so to you, dear reader. It’s the simple things that really touch us and you manage to do it on a regular basis.
Over the weekend we’d wanted to find a source of dubbin in Newport (we’d exhausted all possible sources in Ventnor), so we put a quick question out on Facebook. Not only did loads of you respond with suggestions, but one special lady, Joan Holland, went that extra step and actually phoned a shop to find out if they had it in stock. Amazing – simply amazing.
Finally, thanks to everyone who wished us a Happy Birthday on Facebook, waking up to your messages of support was heart-warming.
Here’s to the next 12 months. There’s lots more to come and we reckon you’re going to love it!
Image: dahlstroms under CC BY 2.0
