Jenni DeFouw

As many of you may have noticed, the e-edition has undergone some changes. Then, to top it off, it was not working properly for several days. I would like to take a moment to walk you through the details. Thank you for your patience, and I apologize for the inconvenience and frustration this has caused.

Let’s start with the sports section. We have traditionally provided an e-edition with several separate sections, which is an important part of the printing process. However, now that we aren’t printing every day, we do not need separate sections on the e-edition, except on Thursdays. We thought it would be easier to flip through the pages by making the e-edition one section.

This caused some confusion for our readers who were looking for sports coverage and couldn’t find the sports section. We’ve also received many comments asking us to eliminate national news. In response to readers’ requests, we have been focusing on local news, including local sports.

Then the comments started coming in because we didn’t have national sports coverage, so we have now added top national sports stories back into the daily news on our website at MauiNews.com and in our daily e-editions.

Just when I thought it was safe to take a deep breath, the e-edition went down. Our team worked hard to fix the problem as quickly as possible, but technology did not want to cooperate. Like all newspapers, we partner with an outside software company to provide an electronic replica of the newspaper online. As we all know, technology fails us sometimes. Then add in a little human error, and the problem becomes even worse.

The good news is this shows us that people are passionate about reading the newspaper. We are sorry for the lapse and understand it was aggravating for many of our readers. But I assure you, no one did this on purpose, and there were many people working hard to fix the problem.

I have been here for a little over three months now, and I will admit that I still have a lot to learn. But I can say, I’ve never worked with a more dedicated team. Every single person who works at The Maui News cares deeply about our readers. We’ve been through a lot of change too, and through this, we have become a stronger team.

Please know that we hear your concerns, we read your comments and we are working hard to improve with the end goal of providing the community with the quality local news they want to read every day.

We will never be perfect, but I promise you that we will keep striving to make each day better than the last. We are not going out of business or closing our doors. We have the support of a company that’s dedicated to local news, and we are working to update our technology and processes so we can become more efficient and continue the good work that The Maui News has provided since 1900.

I sincerely apologize for the problems everyone experienced with the e-edition this last week. We are grateful for our readers, and we come to work each day because of you. With your ongoing patience and support, we will continue to grow and improve as a newspaper, a team and as members of the Maui community.

Jenni DeFouw is the general manager of The Maui News.