From the Editor—
I’ve made it a habit to close each business year with a consolidated review of feedback received over the course of that year from those my content is intended to serve. With that, here is how we’ve planned to move forward from 2018.
During our coverage of key political contests that touched on Saline, we heard from a lot of readers who liked our approach of introducing the subject and then following it through from its various and interrelated angles. Seeing that we’d developed an upfront strategy to ensure objectivity was routinely noted. [1]
They liked not only how things played out between competing candidates, but also the feeling of cohesiveness it provided among races up and down the ticket.
Obviously (and to many, thankfully) such election cycles doesn’t happen every year. Yet we’ve been able to apply this construct to all sorts of coverage areas, including our reports on the elementary school program at Rentschler Farm Museum developed by our Saline Area Historical Society, developments in self-driving vehicle technology, and the new hotel. [2-4]
In 2019, we’ve started to do the same with Saline Singularity and the middle school courtroom experience unit. Expect more from us like this on the Mackinac Policy Conference, too. [5-7]
As part of this longer-form, understanding-oriented approach, I conspicuously wrote an editorial last September cautioning content advocates against looking to Saline Journal as an outlet for running their press releases. It’s not that we don’t often provide access to unedited voices; clearly we do. [8-10]
Neither am I going to waste your time with obvious filler for clicks by running articles almost completely comprised of weather report or others’ video recordings of talking heads. There’s no such thing as “one stop shopping for all news” and posts such as those only go to proving that.
That said, we have made recent adjustments to our front page in support of periodically passing along stray local interest items, things timely though perhaps otherwise missed, and occasional diversions. Other times it’s a tease about work we’re doing on an upcoming feature; less often, a link to articles we’ve recently published.
We currently use our Twitter feed to manage this, although most readers currently access it only on our front page. [11]
The final big change is our migration from Instagram to my personal flickr feed for supplemental and relevant stand alone image hosting. There are several improved value addeds from this for Saline Journal readers. It also responds to an expectation legitimately expressed by so many of you that I not “fight” against the photojournalism aspects of my reporting that got me started with all this in the mid-1980s.
First and foremost, flickr captioning supports direct links back to referenced articles here. Second, we can use its “Albums” tab to organize photographs in ways that parallel our main category sections on the Saline Journal home page. Then, to the point above, as I went on to write for the “About” page there, some stories are best told primarily if not exclusively through images — sometimes single shots, other times by a thoughtfully curated series. [12-15]
On top of that, most of these photographs available for use by others according to Creative Commons licensing according to “Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives” rules. Among other things, this allows immediate access to and free use of these images to help get the word out on all that is Saline Michigan and Saline Journal coverage. And at the maximum practical resolution quality supported by the site. [16,17]
Closing the loop here by returning to our fundamentals, we will be moving forward with plans to average three feature articles per calendar week, but shift from our 2018 routine of tying those to specific days. This not only better fits within the three-approach content presentation that is taking us into 2019, but also recognizes that the stories themselves don’t always fit neatly into rigid editorial calendars.
Other tweaks doubtful require much explanation and are likely only to be noticed through the organizational efficiencies anticipated to come through their use.
References
- “Major Political Party Candidates Have Answered Questions In Races Of Local Interest To Saline Michigan” Dell Deaton (October 12, 2018) Saline Journal.
- “Imagine Seeing Rentschler Farm Museum through the Eyes of a Child During Your Next Visit, Part 1” Dell Deaton (May 25, 2018) Saline Journal.
- “‘PlanetM’ Is Key Element Of Michigan Strategy To Shape Its Own Destiny Through Public-Private Partnerships, Part 1” Dell Deaton (December 27, 2018) Saline Journal.
- “Today Will Be Remembered As Day Eastgate Saline Skyline Changed Forever, With The Hotel Now In Sight” Dell Deaton (June 26, 2018) Saline Journal.
- “Saline Singularity FIRST Robotics Team week 1 progress report: Here’s what happened after the 2019 game was announced” Dell Deaton (January 9, 2019) Saline Journal.
- “SMS students prosecute, defend, and judge criminal case in mock trials held in District 14A-4 Courthouse, Part 1” Dell Deaton (January 31, 2019) Saline Journal.
- “Mackinac Policy Conference provided its last ‘sneak peek’ of the event where Michigan futures will be set in 2019” Dell Deaton (January 30, 2019) 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.
- “Exclusive Interview with Paul Glantz on Disney-Fox Studios Deal, Part 1” Dell Deaton (February 8, 2018) Saline Journal.
- “In a week marked by a good bit of attention on Saline Area Schools, Representative Donna Lasinski talks Michigan priorities” Dell Deaton (February 1, 2019) Saline Journal.
- Saline Journal (Twitter feed).
- Saline Journal (Instagram feed).
- Dell Deaton (flickr feed).
- Dell Deaton: Albums (flickr feed).
- Dell Deaton: About (flickr feed).
- Creative Commons (home page).
- “Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives” Creative Commons.
