Having never given birth myself, I’m going completely on hearsay from Mrs. Cushman when I sometimes compare difficult tasks to bearing children. From where I was standing, it certainly looked like hard work, but all these years later, I know my wife is grateful for having gone through the pain – the rewards are abundant and obvious. Today, I’m pleased to announce that the media family that is Monterey County Weekly has a new addition. Last Thursday, we launched our redesigned website and released a mobile application of the paper.

Stretching this metaphor beyond the bounds of good taste, I want to demand that everybody look at the baby pictures. Please peruse our new Internet-based bundle of joy at www.montereycountyweekly.com and the corresponding app for smartphones, www.montereycountyweekly.com/mobile.

Just like I (mostly) find my kids, I hope you’ll think the enhanced electronic versions of the Weekly are cool, clever and workable. My e-mail address is at the bottom of this column, and if you’re so inclined, I’d welcome your feedback. From an insider’s perspective, I can point out that the new website offers a slew of enhanced interactive features and search capabilities all packaged with easy-to-use functionality in a slick design.

The website redesign was a collaborative process, spearheaded by company CEO and Founder Bradley Zeve, with all the programming done by long-time staffer Kevin Smith, the company’s director of new media, and graphics implemented under the watchful eye of Art Director Karen Loutzenheiser.

“The redesigned website will be a boon to our community, expanding our content and increasing the ways our readers can obtain and then interface with it,” Zeve says. “It offers more in every way – more accessibility and more content.”

Some of website’s enhanced new features include:

Local Biz Guide: A consumer guide for local businesses, sortable by city or business type, offering users a direct link to local businesses, fostering a Buy Local campaign.

Streaming Local Media: Constant feeds 24/7 from local, state and national news sources.

Advanced Calendar Search: Searchable by date, city, or type of event, for this week or weekend’s events, and the future.

Advanced Restaurant and Wine Search: Our restaurant and wine section, the most complete food-and-wine guide in Monterey County, includes write-ups of more than 450 restaurants and wineries, by city, cuisine type or appellation.

Local Blogs: Capturing live feeds of the local blogosphere, Weekly readers and website users can keep tabs on the community’s latest buzz.

Search Engine Optimization: News, features and the Weekly calendar are now easier to find in our improved search feature, and also more accessible through your favorite search engines.

Song of the Day on the Local Jukebox: Music fans can checck out 140-plus local bands and musicians with songs on our local jukebox, with a new song featured daily.

As I hope you’ll agree, our newspaper has thrived because its great content and leading-edge design work so well for the legions of advertisers and readers. For 21 years, a formula of respecting our readers’ time by offering engaging news and narrative has proven successful in getting folks to pick up the paper. Likewise, recognizing our advertisers’ limited budgets and delivering their marketing messages in a paper that people seek out and return to every week has meant a good return on investment.

Rest assured, the paper will remain a fixture in this county for years to come. Even though I’m the type of person who loves ink on paper, the new site is engaging and exciting.

This newspaper is the dominant local print product. Even amidst the recession, it’s a totally solid enterprise, and its future remains bullish. A key to our success has been that the paper is available at more than 975 locations throughout the county. In that vein, the improved website and mobile functionality is a timely technological enhancement of our distribution system. Today, readers can get up-to-date content in a new platform from any location, at any time.

As Zeve notes: “The new website and mobile platform will enable our readers to receive the essential hyper-local content we publish in the newspaper – online or with their mobile phones.”

“I’m delighted this project is ready for public display – really happy,” Smith adds. “It’s a real integration of print, web and mobile media. It has been a labor of love to get it finally launched. Plus, now I have time to read my kids a bedtime story.”

ERIK CUSHMAN is the publisher of Monterey County Weekly. He is reachable at erik@mcweekly.com.