Today selmatimesjournal.com takes a big step in bringing you 24/7 news as we have promised. We’ll stream live from Elkdale Baptist Church, where the evening service that begins at 6 p.m.

This is a news event and something obviously important to our community, no matter which side of the fence you sit on. We don’t know what will be said and we cannot verify the veracity of it.

However, that’s most news events. Many years ago, I remember a wire story and photo during which a public official accused of malfeasance called a press conference. He had long been under investigation and the probe had reached an end. Once all the media arrived, the official welcomed them. He reached for a briefcase near where he stood. I imagine most media representatives in the room thought he would pull out a press release or a statement to read.

Instead, the official pulled out a pistol, stuck it in his mouth and blew out the back of his head, leaving most reporters in that room traumatized. My newspaper at the time opted to run one of the less revealing photographs.

I don’t expect anything dramatic to happen this evening at Elkdale. I expect we’ll hear some unsettling things that will force us to ask questions about ourselves and our community. That being the case, streaming video seems the best way to cover this, as well as in print.

Because we’re streaming and experimenting with our Web site, we are not ignoring the print product. But as most of you know, news does not begin when you wake up in the morning and it does not end when you come home for dinner. Here at the newspaper, we’re attempting to bring you more than a daily paper. If there’s bad weather and a tornado watch is issued, you may come to our Web site and see one of us blogging live about the weather and where the worst storms are and about the damage in the state as well as our community.

When something happens in our community, state or sometimes nationwide, we’ll place the story on our Web site, to keep you informed. That’s our mission here at the Selma Times Journal. We do it to the best of our ability. We are not always perfect in bringing you the news, but we believe in our mission.

I encourage you to watch us closely as we grow some more. Tell us what you would like to see. Talk to us through our comments section, during our live blogs and give me a call or shoot an e-mail.