dotCANTON.com is a locally owned and operated webmag focusing on the businesses, people and critters of Canton, CT. My name is Steve Wilder, and I am the founder and editor of dotCANTON.com, which came to life on May 22, 2010. My wife, Eileen, and I have lived in Canton for 18 years, sharing our space with the bears, the birds and all the other critters that call this terrific town home.
I have an extensive background in journalism, including more than 10 years in the sports department at the New York Post and, most recently, 12 years in the newsroom of the Hartford Courant. I was a news reporter at the beginning of my professional career, have been a sports beat writer (Cosmos soccer in 1977 and ’78 for the Paterson (N.J.) News; Yankees and Mets baseball in 1986 and ’87 for the New York Post) and wrote a weekly column about baseball cards and sports collectibles for the Post in the late 1980s. Mostly, though, I toiled in the trenches at night, editing copy, writing headlines and designing pages in the hours before the paper would go to press. In the years between my time at the Post and The Courant, I worked in sales and marketing for a small business in Kent, CT, and lived briefly in Gaylordsville.
My full-time work at The Courant ended when the relentless gutting of the newspaper industry found its way to my cubicle in Hartford. It was then that I began to think seriously about an idea that occurred to me a couple of years ago, when the hacking of positions at The Courant started to affect the way the paper covered (or didn’t cover) rural towns like Canton. I believe I can do something about that with dotCANTON.com.
As I crafted a plan for this webmag, it was clear I had to start with something a one-man band could handle, so I am focusing on the businesses, people and critters (wild and tame) of this 26-square-mile community. You’ll see a lot of photos, and I promise the length of my posts won’t require a nap halfway through. My goal is to keep this site fresh, uncluttered and easy to negotiate. I want to be informative, and maybe even a little entertaining. I don’t want to take up a lot of your time, but it would be wonderful if you would stop by often to see if there are any new posts. I could put one up at any time.
At the top of this page you will see the list of dotCANTON‘s active pages: Page 1, Pet Pix, We’re So Vane, Wildlife, About and Contact. You’re obviously on the About page right now. The Contact page provides information on how to reach me. Page 1 is where all new posts (including photos) will go as they are produced. The Pet Pix, We’re So Vane and Wildlife pages are for reader participation. Click on those pages and you’ll see how you can join in.
One more thing. Here and there you will see links to a Media-Pro Enterprises website. That’s the company I formed in 2009 in connection with the freelance copy editing I continue to do for magazines and others.
See you around town,
Steve Wilder
Founder, Editor
dotCANTON.com is locally owned and operated and is a production of Media-Pro Enterprises LLC
