JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (ABP) –The newly redesigned Associated Baptist Press website (www.baptistnews.com) offers expanded resources and reader interaction, but the real change is the way ABP and its three Baptist media partners are collaborating to produce the site, according to Executive Editor Greg Warner.
The nearly 2-year-old New Voice Media Group partnership includes ABP; the Baptist Standard, newsjournal of the Baptist General Convention of Texas; the Religious Herald, which serves the Baptist General Association of Virginia; and Word & Way, the historic Missouri Baptist newspaper.
The four partners have collaborated to build one state-of-the-art website that makes content from each partner immediately available to all the others, Warner said. And the first-of-its-kind collaboration means users of each partner's website have access to Internet tools that no one partner could have provided alone.
"The four New Voice partners are modeling a kind of cooperation that is rare in Baptist life but … can open up powerful new possibilities for us and our readers," Warner said. "We believe the New Voice Media websites, working together, can create an online community of traditional and progressive Baptists that can make a real contribution to the future of Baptist life."
The new website offers click-of-the-mouse access to information and insight from a broad range of Baptist sources as well as easy opportunities for reader interaction, such as real-time comments on news stories.
Advertisers will also, for the first time, have the option of increasing their reach by placing ads on ABP's site and the three news partners' sites simultaneously.
As the site grows, it will provide new kinds of content, such as resources for ministers, churches and families. The new forms of content will respond to the results of a New Voice Media survey of church needs.
The site's new resources will be a boon for local congregations, according to one pastor. "New Voice Media provides a platform for churches to be able to do things not found anywhere else in Baptist life," said ABP board member William Shiell, pastor of First Baptist Church in Knoxville, Tenn., in e-mailed comments.
Website users, Shiell said, can "communicate about God's mission in the world through local churches, connect to other Christians who are serving faithfully, and find a pool of resources and information to help them minister in an effective, high-quality manner."
The Baptist Standard and ABP are the first two New Voice partners to go live with their content on the new site, which is being developed by Brainstorm Lab of Macon, Ga. The Religious Herald and Word & Way will soon follow.
"ABP's new website is certainly not lacking in its ability to dazzle!" noted Religious Herald Editor Jim White, in a statement. "The website enables the Internet visitor not only to read the news but watch and hear the news through its video and audio capabilities."
"I am pleased to see the new Associated Baptist Press site up and running," added Word & Way Editor Bill Webb. "ABP has been a dependable and vital news service since it began some 18 years ago. Now it has taken some giant steps to add contemporary media and visual resources. These new capabilities further enhance ABP's ministry of news, feature and opinion dissemination."
The ABP website, the editors said, reflects the New Voice partnership's commitment to offering traditional and progressive Baptists a platform for cooperation and information.
Baptist Standard Editor Marv Knox explained that the websites of the New Voice partners provide "a tangible, practical way to put in place the priesthood of the believer."
The new site "is the first major, tangible step in creating a new way for like-minded folks — particularly traditional Baptists — to find each other," he wrote. "We're in the process of creating spaces for folks to get together and explore ideas — about faith, church, life, missions, ministry, family and all the other truly important relationships that define what it means to be fully human and intentionally Christian."
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Baptist newspapers, ABP creating new media venture (7/26/2007)