Wyoming network links cities

Finding a way to link the small communities scattered across Wyoming’s wide open spaces is no easy task, but Dave Lerner may have found a way – using cyberspace.

Lerner and his partner, Gus Zader, have formed Wyoming Network Inc., a collection of city Web sites all linked together in one large, statewide network.

Wyoming Network (www.WyomingNetwork.com) is a statewide Web site with news, sports, weather and statewide forums and chatrooms – but with individual community Web sites that feature localized information for that community ã everything from school-lunch programs to local advertising.

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“We’re tying the state together in a way that has never been done before,” Lerner said. “(Former) Gov. Mike Sullivan said Wyoming is like one small town with very long main streets. Well, we just tied this whole town all together. We’re trying to have a town hall meeting with every neighborhood represented.”

Wyoming Network started last October with local Web sites in 13 Wyoming communities, representing every corner of the state. It since has expanded to 17 sites, recognizing that distinct communities such as Powell and Cody want their own Web sites even though they are only 25 miles apart.

Each site contains certain statewide features, such as news, weather and sports, as well as chat rooms, forums and the joke of the day, but each also contains local information, such as school lunches, movie listings and local churches.

“It’s not unique to have a community Web site – they’re all over the place,” Lerner explained. “What makes us unique is our network, with the sites all linked together.

Picture a resident of Jackson accessing JacksonNetwork.com to find out the local movie lineup and ending up chatting with somebody in Gillette or Rock Springs.

“That’s what makes us unique – the fact that you can be sitting in your home town and all of a sudden be connected around the state with people who have similar interests.”

It was Lerner’s and Zader’s mutual interest in computers that resulted in the creation of Wyoming Network Inc. Lerner, a former television news director and news producer for EchoStar Communications Corp., and Zader, multimedia production coordinator at Laramie County Community College, were playing a computer game together when they came up with the idea of community Web sites around Wyoming.

“This was such a good idea that we thought that somebody was going to do it, so it might as well be us,” Lerner said.

“I thought a network of Web sites would be a way of creating a community,” he added. “Instead of creating one big Wyoming Web site, we wanted a sense of individual communities, a sense of loyalty to a local Web site. That’s why we created 13 separate Web sites ä so that we could be very, very locally focused.”

Lerner and Zader are co-presidents of the nine-person operation, with Zader handling the computer and Web-site design and Lerner in charge of news, sales and marketing.

“From a business perspective, we’ve created a very important niche for local businesses to reach local customers through the Internet,” Lerner explained. “Until we came online, advertisers on the Internet might find customers in Paris or Milwaukee or Miami, and for local businesses, that might not be helpful.

“A shoe store, for example, doesn’t want to reach somebody sitting in Dallas ã they want to reach the person down the street.”

By creating a network of local Web sites, Wyoming Network provides an avenue for local advertisers to reach their local customers down the street via the Internet.

Wyoming Network was launched after a number of Wyoming communities had developed local Web sites, both public and private, but Lerner said a key difference was that many of them were aimed at visitors and tourists, while Wyoming Network concentrated on the locals.

“We were the only ones on a statewide basis to say if you live in this town, this Web site’s for you. That was what made us unique,” he said.

Ironically, the network’s success is partly attributable to what has been a liability historically in Wyoming – a large land mass with sparse population that is influenced by out-of-state news media.

“The reason this works in Wyoming and would not necessarily work in most other states is that Wyoming doesn’t have a huge city that dominates the landscape,” Lerner said. “If you tried to do this in Colorado, information about Denver would take up 80 percent of your Web site, to the detriment of the other communities. If you did it without Denver, you’re leaving out a huge part of the state.

“The same thing if you were in Nebraska – you can’t do it without Omaha and you can’t do it with Omaha. Most states have huge cities – Wyoming doesn’t. Cheyenne and Casper don’t dominate the landscape so much that it would preclude everything else.”

Wyoming Network is growing steadily. Back in November, it was recording 4,000 hits a week. Last month, it was exceeding 22,000 a week as people continue to go online and discover it.

“Our goal is to make it interesting enough to come on every day,” Lerner said. “We want to create a nice place to go. We’re a Web site you can trust, a Web site that’s designed for the family. We’re really looking for a sense of community – the kind of thing that Wyoming would find useful, helpful, fun, entertaining, educational, informative and a resource.”