Inner Circle: Way to go, Southern Illinois
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[From first quarter to second quarter, Southern Illinois newspapers made significant progress on Inner Circle.
At the end of the first quarter, none of the Southern Illinois newspapers were certified. This quarter, more than half are certified, and most of the others are missing only one or two categories.
The News & Interactive Division did a regional meeting with the editors, publishers, regional publisher and division manager to go over all of the areas of News Cube and Web Cube. Then we followed up with sites visits for half of the papers. The other half are still on the schedule to visit.
"Midway through the second quarter these Southern Illinois papers still had a ways to go," said News & Interactive Division Executive Director David Arkin. "It's wonderful to see such movement so quickly among newspapers with small staffs. Looking at their papers this week, you can see how these formats are brightening up their pages and making their websites livelier."
Carrie Gonzalez, an editor for one of the Southern Illinois weeklies, said readers have responded to the new features, too. "Inner Circle has been a fabulous thing for our publication. We are getting a lot of positive feedback from the community," she said.
Here are the Southern Illinois papers that have been certified for the second quarter:
Harrisburg Daily Register
Marion Daily Republican
Murphysboro Amercian
Olney Daily Mail
Randolph County Herald
West Frankfort Daily American