From the Editor—
I seldom read so-called community calendars more than once, or at best, once in a blue moon. Bet most people reading this are the same way. [1]
Years ago, in the days before we all began to rely upon the Internet so heavily for information, Ann Arbor Observer was the highly anticipated go-to for identifying date-specific things to do, places to go, and don’t-miss opportunities from which content for filling the pages of Franklin Planners could be filled. [2-4]
To have your event make the cut and be listed in Ann Arbor Observer was a big deal. And everyone knew it: The person or organization making its pitch, and every reader who ended up seeing those that had made the cut.
Now we’ve replaced the effort that goes into typesetting, pressing ink onto paper, and physically getting the information all that carries into the callused hands of this person and that. Keyboard direct to cloud for immediate access via ubiquitous smartphone thanks to just a few soft taps on its screen. [5,6]
This ease of distribution coupled with consumer expectation if not interest in a greater amount of content from content provider streams has increasingly served to result in stuff for the sake of stuff preferable to anything that in any way slows getting whatever I can get to anyone and everyone who has even the slightest desire to receive it.
People and clubs and companies seized on this as an inexpensive way to distribute information to stakeholders on their own things to come by way of their own calendars. Captive audiences knew where to look for it. Public accessability was provided where appropriate in hopes of having details discovered and acted upon by even wider audiences wandering the ether.
Legacy and nascent new media outlets took the freely available content from any and all of the above to launch their own aggregated calendars. Along the lines of what I wrote in my February editorial, this served their dreams of becoming a one-stop shop for all things news. [7]
Then came the “community calendar.”
I guess all that cutting and pasting of content from other sites proved just a little bit too time consuming, or two expensive even to house an unpaid intern for purposes of completing. So those calendars were opened to literally anyone, to post anything — subject only to the most basic standards of descency. And thus these things died almost as quickly as they took off.
Anyone who’s been at their keyboard on a Monday, clicked on a community calendar for Tuesday, and been answered by a deluge of unvetted everythings happening everwhere anytime knows exactly what I mean. Sorta like when the dam breaks in Force 10 from Navarone. [8]
Not long before the launch of Saline Journal, I had breakfast with a writer for one of the local online publications. Given his responsibility for its calendar section, I made reference without any additional context to an upcoming something-or-other it had listed. Blank stare. I offered a bit more, and still got nothing. [9]
“It’s on your calendar,” I final said in exasperation.
“So what?” came his answer. “I don’t read it” — as if to imply that anyone who would assume or expect otherwise was unreasonable, or something worse. Then back he went to his plate of well apportioned plate of eggs and bacon.
I’ve thought back on that conversation a lot since then. More often than not, when deciding whether to accept or reject an unsolicited story idea. That’s the difference between editors who are editors, and writers who call themselves editors. Worse yet: If the “editor” fails to edit his or her own publication, they’ve effectively delegated the job to their readers. And when they do it with their calendar sections, they’ll ultimately teach their readers not to go there much at all or ever again. [10]
Saline Journal doesn’t run stories that other outlets run. So the idea of including a calendar didn’t initially seem to me to have a place here. At the same time, a good number of our articles do tie to specific dates and have other elements that lend themselves to “calendars.” Off and on, our Twitter feed serves calendar functions. Still, I resisted. [11]
Then the topic started coming up with increasing regularity and intensity during our Monday staff meetings. First one, then another, then a third different person would make the argument.
We get all this information and we read it, right? Everything isn’t important; a lot is not relevant to =Saline Journal readers, and a lot is just advertising with no objective value. But some of it is important enough to make our own calendars for follow-up. And some of it we know our readers would find value in knowing about, even if we won’t be there to cover it.
What if we ran a calendar that was committed to including only listings that we ourselves had actually =read, then affirmatively decided that it passed editorial scrutiny such that it merited recognition here?
I could commit to that. And I did. After all, I don’t just write for Saline Journal — I’m its editor. [12]
References
- “What Is a Blue Moon?” Tim Sharp (November 15, 2018) Space.
- “Internet History Timeline: ARPANET to the World Wide Web” Kim Ann Zimmermann and Jesse Emspak (June 27, 2017) Live Science.
- Ann Arbor Observer (home page).
- “15 Facts about Franklin Planner’s History” (March 31, 2016) Planner Talk, Franklin Planner.
- “How Its Made – 076 Newspapers” How Its Made (December 22, 2014) YouTube.
- “Understanding the Newspaper News Cycle” Guy Bergstrom (August 20, 2019) The Balance.
- “There’s no such thing as ‘one stop shopping for all news, but we are constantly improving what our own shop offers” Dell Deaton (February 4, 2019) Saline Journal.
- “Force 10 From Navarone (1978) – The Dam Bursts Scene (11/11) | Moviclips” Movieclips (May 30, 2018) YouTube.
- “Welcome to the Pre-Launch of Saline Journal Online Metro Magazine” Dell Deaton (March 5, 2018) Saline Journal.
- “You Should Continue To Send Us Your Press Releases. We Won’t Run Them, But, We Seriously Do Want To Receive Them.” Dell Deaton (September 3, 2018) Saline Journal.
- “Saline Journal” Twitter.
- “Calendar” Saline Journal.
