Don Curtis works in a wheat field north of Guymon. Photo by Bryan Terry.

The high cost of gasoline is making it almost impossible to produce and deliver The Oklahoman to the furthest parts of the state. As part of a test to develop future audience in these distant locations, The Oklahoman soft-launched MainstreetOK.com this week. An electronic version of Oklahoma small town news, this blog like site will focus around the town of Guymond, Oklahoma.

Giving it a local flavor and a true hometown read, this version of Panhandle news will be edited and maintained by a local resident of Guymond. With social networking built-in, this site includes local news, sports, movie times, photo galleries, classifieds and weather. In the near future and currently in final development, this project will include a New York Times style reader, which is a down-loadable software version of The Oklahoman that lives on your computer. This version of the newspaper will update itself on a continual basis. I’ll have more on that the day it launches.

Commissioned by The Oklahoman circulation department, project contributors include Jennifer Armstrong-Zink, Billy Mabray, Amy Mitchell, Andy Fugate, Jake Behrens, Jay Spear, Tommy Yi, Alan Herzberger, Pat Dennis, Joe Hopper, Rob Wescott and a small part of myself.