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The Ely Echo has some news of its own to announce. The locally owned company has a new podcast and has added to its printing equipment.
The Pulse of Ely has become a regular favorite of podcast listeners on various platforms as well as the elyecho. com website.
Every week Publisher Nick Wognum and Editor Tom Coombe record a podcast on what is making news in the Ely area. That has often included having guests as well.
“We have really enjoyed doing the Pulse of Ely and we’ve had some great guests join us as well,” said Wognum.
The sound has also been improved thanks to an investment in state of the art recording equipment.
“Podcasts have come a long way and ours is no exception,” said Coombe. “When we started we were just recording with a cellphone. Now we’ve got microphones and a mixer we use to make the sound even better.”
General Manager Cameron Weisert has served as the producer for the Pulse of Ely, running the mixing board during tapings and touching up the sound before it is loaded onto the internet. “We’re lucky to have someone as talented as Cam on our staff,” said Wognum. “He’s really a master of all trades.”
The podcast also has new intro and outro music that was created locally.
“Rob Mattson was the first person I thought of when Cam suggested we add music. And in a very short time Rob put together a catchy riff that we’ve been using each time. He’s just a very good musician and this shows some of his abilities,” said Wognum.
The Echo also does a daily sports podcast Monday through Friday. Coombe updates listeners on the latest news in the sports world, from local high school and college teams to Minnesota teams such as the Vikings, Wild and Timberwolves.
On the printing side, the Echo continues to invest in equipment to serve the printing needs of the area.
“We had previously upgraded our wide format HP printer which is something area contractors used a lot,” said Wognum. “And Cam has made it even better with special photo paper built for that machine. It’s amazing the quality he can get from that machine.”
Recently the Echo took delivery of a second high speed color copier, and upgraded the one they had.
“We used to have a black and white and one color copier. We decided to drop the black and white and get another color machine. That way we can run both at the same time, doubling our production,” said Wognum.
The Echo prints everything for individual copies for walk in customers to thousands and thousands of jobs for companies around the area.
“We just turned over one million color copies and that’s pretty cool. That’s from everything from posters and flyers to business cards and raffle tickets,” said Wognum.
Now both machines have an additional feature, inline folding.
“We could print a booklet previously and have it come out folded, collated and stapled but our only fold option was a half fold. Now we can do letter and double parallel folds without having to do a thing. It’s a nice new feature to be able to offer our customers,” said Wognum.
The Echo also features a website with a photo based layout that even includes video and audio built right into the site.
“We know it’s a visual world and whether it’s the newspaper or our website, I don’t think there are any other papers our size that run as many photos as we do.”
ECHO General Manager Cam Weisert helps roll in a new Ricoh color copier to the Echo office this spring.
