Driver's Seat Celebrates 10th Anniversary With Major Change
by: Jeff Mills

FARMINGTON, Mo. (May 9, 2006) - The Driver's Seat, Southeast Missouri's only continuous racing publication, is celebrating it's 10th anniversary by making a major change.

The Driver's Seat will no longer be a monthly published tabloid newspaper, it will instead go on-line to provide more services while at the same time becoming more available to the racing public.

"I've been thinking about doing this for over two years," said Driver's Seat Owner/Publisher Jeff Mills of Farmington. "Recently some other events occurred that not only opened my eyes to the changing times it also made me realize I was not getting my product to as many people as I needed to. This new 'on-line' version of the Driver's Seat will allow me to do things like add both video and audio streams to the 'paper.' Plus it will be available 24-hours a day, seven days a week."

One of the items Mills said will remain the same will be the actual pages of the newspaper.

"You'll still be able to check out everything from the first page to the back page on the website," Mills said. "And more importantly, the photos, the ads and everything else will now be in color instead of black and white."

The Driver's Seat started in 1996 when Mills was working as the Sports Editor of the Farmington Press Leader.

"I was always fighting with the publisher about how important racing was in our area, but he was a golf freak and wouldn't let me publish but just bits and pieces," Mills said. "So I went on my own and made a 'test' paper and took it out to both the Doe Run Raceway and the St. Francois County Raceway to see how it would be received. Well, it's 10-years later and even though there's been a lot of changes, the idea remains the same to give a neglected sport the attention it deserves."

Since the first papers were published, the Driver's Seat has always been free to race fans at area tracks and at various drop-off points throughout the region. The new on-line edition of the Driver's Seat will continue that tradition.

"We are still tweaking and working on the site," Mills said. "But I've got a great webdesigner in Nick Harris and we're going to put together an on-line paper that people can rely and depend on.

"In honor of our last black and white edition, you can check out the May 1, 2006 edition of the Driver's Seat on-line right now. We'll go full-color next issue."

To visit the paper's website go to: www.driversseat-online.com