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Farm & Ranch News Launches Web Site

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By RAY REYES | The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 7, 2007

PLANT CITY - After nearly 50 years in circulation, the Farm & Ranch News has made the leap onto a new platform: the World Wide Web.

The independent newspaper, which covers agriculture in the Tampa Bay area, will publish monthly in print, but its launch into cyberspace broadens readership, editor and publisher George Parker Jr. said.

The Web site, www.farmandranchnews.com, debuted in August. Each page of the most recent issue is reproduced online, including every article and advertisement, Parker said. Content exclusive to the site includes photo galleries, where readers can buy photographs that did not make it to print.

Parker said the response to the online version has been positive.

"It's amazing," Parker said. "I did not expect to get immediate results."

Parker, a longtime reporter who got his start at The (Plant City) Courier in 1958, was an editor at the Brandon News from 1960 to 1976. A pad and pen are familiar tools, Parker said, but a keyboard and mouse took a little getting used to.

"I was dragged five years ago into the 21st century," Parker said of getting his first computer. "Now, I can't live without it."

He founded what became the Farm & Ranch News in 1959, while he was working at The Courier. The agriculture beat always fascinated him.

"The people in agriculture are really salt-of-the-earth type people," Parker said. "Very honest and hardworking."

The newspaper was established formally in 1974, "when I found out it could put grits on the table," he said.

Parker, 70, said he cannot imagine a life other than publishing, either in print or online.

"I have ink in my veins," he said.

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