Dear reader: Vox online now interactive city guide

Dear Reader:

At about midnight Wednesday I closed my eyes, cringed a little and typed the command that launched the new voxmagazine.com. Thankfully, it worked.

Voxmagazine.com represents a shift in our thinking about how we can tell the news online. Rather than just shoveling the weekly print stories onto the Web, we’ve tried to create a comprehensive resource about dining and entertainment in Columbia.

I hope you’ll visit the site and explore the features and information we’ve added.

First off, you’ll probably notice the movie times front and center on the homepage. Click on any of the movies to view the trailer, maybe read a Vox review and, more importantly, write your own. We’ve opened up the site so you can now comment on everything, including articles, movies, restaurants and events.

My favorite part of the new site is our restaurant guide, which you can find by clicking on the “food” section. A team of reporters gathered information on more than 150 restaurants in Columbia, down to the nitty gritty. Want to know which restaurant has free WiFi and allows smoking, or which bar has the most TVs? This is your place.

I’m proud of voxmagazine.com and hope you find it useful. But it’s just a start. Over the next few months we’ll be taking the digital sledgehammer to columbiamissourian.com, mymissourian.com and adelantesi.com in turn. (It’s kinda fun.)

As we rebuild each of these sites we’ll be experimenting with even more features. It’s central to our mission and a big part of my job to experiment with new ideas and tools to make journalism better. But, we won’t get very far without your ideas, your feedback and your patience. Some of you have already written in to let us know what works, what doesn’t and what we’ve missed on the new voxmagazine.com. Please, keep it coming.