I've been a reporter for 19 years (not counting college and graduate school work) who since the 9/11 terrorist attacks has been covering the military and civilian world outside Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, and before that, outside Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico. As things began to fall apart in late 2008 at GateHouse Media, which owned the newspaper for which I previously worked, I was given the opportunity and startup capital by local businesspeople that were needed to start an online newspaper covering the same things online that I'd been doing for years in print.

Let's see if it's possible to make online journalism work in a rural Missouri Ozarks community outside one of America's largest military installations, where we train our soldiers in key skills to fight the War on Terror such as defending against improvised explosive devices, detecting chemical weapons, and humanely handling insurgents caught on the battlefield.