March 2010

This is our first anniversary issue.

Haughtline Dweethly made its debut on March 1, 2009 and has completed a successful year as an online magazine offered free to anyone on the Internet.

Thanks to all of our readers whose words of encouragement have kept this endeavor alive and growing.  We welcome your comments and suggestions for improvement.  editor@haughtline.net.

I do have a bit of self-criticism. 

In my daily PolitiQuips, I often gig politicians for failing to keep their promises.  I now find myself embarrassed to admit I'm guilty of the same thing.

I've done pretty well with the daily updates, skipping only a six-day period in February while on a trip to the Virgin Islands.  But I have not produced fresh material on a weekly or monthly basis as I had intended.

I'm going to do my best to do better in this second year of publication.

Robert L. Haught
Editor and Publisher

 

September 2009

 

Having passed the six-month mark, I guess it's not proper to refer to Haughtline Dweethly as a "new" online magazine ... but that doesn't mean we can't keep doing new things. Like the flash intro, for instance. We held off adding it because, frankly, a flash intro can be an annoying fence to cross before entering a website. But all you have to do is click on "skip intro" and it goes away.

 

I'm encouraged by the growth of HD's readership, and for that reason serious consideration is being given to taking advertising. The variety of offerings -- dining, gardening, reading, writing, travel -- should have broad appeal to advertisers. There probably won't be an announcement. The ads will just start appearing on the righthand rail.

 

Because the daily PolitiQuips were taking up too much space on the cover page, those have been cut back to one a day, with links to three full pages of commentaries. While I've managed to do a daily update every morning since the magazine was launched on March 1, we've not matched that pace well enough with some of the other features. So our fall resolution is to do better. 

 

We tried something new for the Travel section in August: a TravelBlog version of the Matouring column. We'll be doing more of that during our future trips, as well as informative, helpful and fun-to-read travel articles.

 

Our second Photo Feature album has been added. "Lake Powell Reflections", the work of Haughtline contributor Gary Haught, is an amazing visual experience we hope you enjoy as much as we did. We'll keep the "Spot, the Cow Dog" album available for new readers of the magazine.

 

Thank you.

 

Robert L. Haught

Editor and Publisher

April 2009

With our feet now firmly planted in the field of online magazine publishing, here are a few thoughts from the perspective of the first month's experience after launching "Haughtline Dweethly" on March 1: