East graduates continue their passion for journalism in a struggling economy

Editor-in-chief of Kcfreepress.com Lucas Wetzel often recalls the phrase “the more voices the better” when thinking of his recently launched web site. Ever since the day he came upon this sentence on the Chicago Tribune Web site, he hasn’t been able to get it out of his head. By “voices” the Tribune writer meant newspapers. Wetzel agreed.

Wetzel has worked for mainstream papers in Kansas, and has always loved the idea of adding even more voices. More voices to cover more events. To cover more breaking news. To cover more topics.

And now with a site to call his own, Wetzel’s adding his own voice to the world of journalism.

KCfreepress.com, one and a half months into its existence, has gone from an idea to a functional Web site with interactive polls, multimedia and a compact layout. The site is the brain-child of Jeff Henry, owner of Big Shots Web Marketing and Development. While Henry was working at Pitch Weekly, he came up with an idea for a Web site that covers Kansas City news on a local level.

Through a colleague, Wetzel caught wind of this idea. At that time, he was a free-lance writer, bouncing from publication to publication writing small stories week to week. In addition to writing, he edited comic strips for Universal Press Syndicate, looking at pieces ranging from Doonesbury to Dear Abby. Despite the few jobs he held, he was struggling to find work in the field of journalism. The decline of newspapers made jobs scarce. When he heard of the idea, he was interested.

“It seemed like a lot of opportunities for people who graduated when I did to write for newspapers was kind of drying up,” Wetzel said. “It’s a rough time for print publications, they’re not necessarily able to hire a lot of people, so I thought this would be a great way to get in and do some writing, and not to worry about the cost of print.”

So with Wetzel on board, planning for the Web site began. Wetzel decided to contact his high school friend Jay Senter and offer him the job of executive editor. The two go back nearly a decade and attended East together, Senter one grade ahead of Wetzel. Often they reminisce about their days spent working on the Harbinger.

They talk about their adviser Bob Dillon, his quirky quotes and getting the chance to write about Star Wars. Most memories are admittedly foolish, but gaining that experience was meaningful to both Wetzel and Senter.

“Just being in a position to make decisions on what content’s going to run and what changes need to be made to a story for it to go through was really valuable,” Wetzel said.

After getting Senter on board, the two employed three other journalists. The first step in the creation of the Web site was to talk about what they wanted to cover, who they wanted to address and why people would care.

The five-man staff had long conversations about the content of the site. They talked about the events they wanted to cover, sections they wanted to add and topics they wanted to write about. They arrived at the conclusion that their site would address news on a local level and pick up on major national stories.

“I think in terms of our actual hard news focus, we’re extremely locally focused,” Senter said. “If there’s a national story going on, we want to talk to local people who have an informed opinion on it, so we really just try to localize pretty much everything out there.”

This approach to their site has distinguished them from more mainstream publications on the internet. According to Senter, a person can go to Google news and get all the information they could possibly want about what’s going on in the nation. But with their site, they try to not be a continuation of that same information, and provide news specific to Kansas City.

After finding this focus, the next step was to design a basic layout for the site. So with no more than a sharpie and a piece of paper, Wetzel and Senter began to draw up a site map, detailing the outline and specific areas of the site. The piece of white computer paper still lies in Wetzel’s desk to this day, and is referred to frequently. It is the template for their site. And although the site has come a long way, it is not quite where they want it to be.

“It probably took a month and a half to put together,” Wetzel said. “But the nice thing about web sites is that it’s always a work in progress, it launched on Dec. 9 [2009] and we’re already evolving, but there’s a lot we still want to do.”

Some things that Wetzel and Senter would like to improve upon is including shorter pieces and blogs. According to Wetzel, when people go online they’re not looking to necessarily read a lot of context. Instead, they’re essentially looking for a quick bit of information to tide them over.

And five weeks in, this five-man publication is starting to get the hang of it. They are settling in and becoming accustomed to the daily routine. On a day-to-day basis, Wetzel and Senter tend to take the helm, instructing their editors on what needs to be put up, what needs to be written and what seems to not be working.

One of the reasons they hold these leadership positions is because of their experience in the field of journalism. They’ve worked for local print publications including Lawrence Journal World, the Kansas City Star and Pitch Weekly. They’ve written on a larger level, for a much larger audience. But right now, both Wetzel and Senter are happier than they were working with these publications.

Their office may just be one floor of an office complex. But it’s theirs. Writing news the way they want to, in the format they please. Kcfreepress.com is where they want to be.

“What’s exciting to us is that we’re able to build a new outlook where it’s more accessible to free-lance writers,” Wetzel said. “And we can do a lot with video and multimedia and really establish ourselves over time as a place where people can have their voices heard.”