D  e  s  e  r  t     E  x  p  o  s  u  r  e     March 2005

Increasing Our Exposure

Now showing at a computer screen near you—the new Desert Exposure Web site.

I've "been online" almost since the beginning, before hardly anyone outside the Defense Department had heard of the Internet, back when modems lumbered along at 300 bps (or "baud") instead of today's 56,000. "Broadband" presumably meant a group of overweight musicians, and "www" stood for the start of a stutter.

I know I sound like one of those old-timers who prattles on about walking 10 miles to school in a blizzard. The point isn't that I've "been there, done that," or whether I was sending email back when the electrons in the message had to be herded across the wires, one at a time. Nope, it's just that I'm an online addict, a digital diehard, a wired wonk. You'll take me offline when you rip the mouse out of my cold, dead fingers.

I even spent almost two years working for Bill Gates, creating a Web site for Microsoft that would guide users to entertainment options in Minneapolis and St. Paul. (Its coolest feature, only obliquely related to arts and entertainment, was a section that tapped into the highway department's roadway cameras and traffic-jam monitors, letting users see the congestion before driving into it. When, yes, blizzards threatened to turn I-94 into a frigid parking lot—which, given that this was Minnesota, was pretty much any time from October through April—I spent more time using the site than crafting copy for it.) I got out, fortunately, before Microsoft realized that this was too expensive an enterprise to be funded by advertising on the scale of, well, Desert Exposure.
So why in the name of Moore's Law, you're no doubt wondering by now, hasn't Desert Exposure been online?

Oh, we've had a Web site, with the URL address on every other page of the print edition, but it was little more than each issue's table of contents and some background information about the publication. If you missed an issue (shame on you!) and wanted to read the features online, you were out of luck. If you wanted to email a friend about a story you'd enjoyed and include a link so he could see for himself—sorry. Tourists planning a visit to southwest New Mexico, who might benefit from the area's most complete events guide? No can do.
Until now, that is.

I won't bore you with all the reasons it took us almost two years—next issue is our second anniversary of acquiring Desert Exposure—to launch a full-featured online presence. But there were two important roadblocks en route to the proverbial Information Superhighway: First, as I'm constantly reminding readers in this space, Desert Exposure is made possible by advertising. How would we pay for an online version? (Noble as our intentions here may sometimes be, we are not, after all, running a charity.) We finally figured out an online advertising model that makes sense and that's fair to our valued print advertisers—who will be the only ones eligible to advertise on the new DesertExposure.com.

Second, launching a Web site—as I knew all too well—is hard work, especially to do it right. The print Desert Exposure keeps us plenty busy, thanks very much, and we have this wasteful need for sleep and other occasional minutes away from our computer screens for eating and personal hygiene. Then, too, although I'm adequately technically handy, I'm no webmaster. Anybody can put up a Web page or two, but we envisioned a rich site that matched the quality of our print publication.

Fortunately, a mutual acquaintance brought us together with an experienced Web designer (among his many other skills), David Cortner, who while visiting Silver City made the mistake of observing that putting Desert Exposure online would be "pretty easy."

You can now see the results of his very hard work, live, at www.desertexposure.com. Both prior issues from 2005 are already online, as we begin to build an ever-growing archive of Desert Exposure content that will even be searchable, so you (and I!) will never again have to scratch your head over "which issue was that in?" This current issue will be posted a few days after the print edition hits the stands, with future issues to follow similarly.

Besides being convenient for current readers, we hope the new site will lead legions of new readers to discover Desert Exposure. Our print run and network of distribution sites can only reach so many people out of the 246,000 who live in southwest New Mexico, after all. The site also addresses the frequent requests we get to expand our availability beyond this immediate region—to Tucson and southeastern Arizona; more widely and regularly to T or C, Alamogordo and El Paso; even to Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Ink on paper costs money; electrons are cheap.

The advantages, too, for the region's renewed push to attract tourism should be obvious. Now when a potential visitor Googles for "Silver City" or "Las Cruces" or "Deming," we can help them "stumble across" the local artists and galleries featured in our Arts Exposure section, the restaurants reviewed quarterly in Red or Green?, 40 Days and 40 Nights' worth of events, and the colorful attractions written up in our feature stories. The process doesn't even have to be that direct: Over time, as our editorial archive grows, casual Web surfers seeking info on, say, Billy the Kid, Geronimo, the Tour of the Gila bike race or the Gila National Forest will find their way to Desert Exposure—and ultimately, perhaps, to a non-virtual visit. Similarly, retirees looking for a place to put down roots can click their way to our "Four Gentle Seasons" and enchanting lifestyle.

Not that we want any of you to stop reading the print edition, which remains our bread and butter. But think of DesertExposure.com as a new way to share the pleasures you find inside each issue. Give it a try, click around, and let us know what you think (by email, of course, at letters@desertexposure.com, or snail mail if you must).

And don't worry if you don't have a superfast connection to the Internet. Some of us old-timers still remember those 300-baud days, and have made sure the site loads swiftly with no unnecessary technical tricks.

If your modem's lost in a blizzard, though, you're on your own.

When not surfing the Web, David A. Fryxell spends his time as editor and publisher of Desert Exposure.

 

Back to top of page.