[RP TownTalk] Town Crier improvements

Mon Dec 5 15:44:00 UTC 2005

Rob -- I'm very pleased with the needed improvements you've launched to make the Town Crier more useful, appealing, informative and professional.  :-)

I thought the insightful article about the Farmer's Market was a good decision.  The same old flyer every month leads people to eventually just ignore it.  Who needs to read the same old info every month?  

However, your articles gave readers some interesting in-depth info, telling the reader not just the what, when & where (like the redundant flyer), but also the who and why behind the Farmers Market.  That adds personality to the farmers market, leading readers to attach greater meaning and care, and hence support, for our town's budding enterprise.  Since more customers came following your change, it seems that you were on target with your approach.

I understand (from my editor's tenure from 1989-93, with you and other volunteers) that an editor often must make the hard choices.  There will always be those who disagree, and too often that's due to a contributing author's over-sensitivity to changes.  When they're not familiar with being edited, many folks feel personal critical umbrage whenever they see the editor's red ink.   But just keeping the status quo to keep everyone happy is not a recipe for moving the TownCrier and our town forward.  Remember, "if you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got before."

So, along with the critiques that are also a part of the editor's job, I also want to add my commendation for a vastly improved Town Crier.  I'm sure there are areas where you could improve further, so constructive criticism is valuable too, as you've said.  But editors also need occassional kudos for all the great stuff they're doing too.  Atta boy!

Appreciatively, 
Ken Laureys
4718 Riverdale Rd.

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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: Attempt to Repeal Town Crier Code (Rob Oppenheim)

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Message: 1
Date: Sat, 3 Dec 2005 13:02:55 -0500
From: Rob Oppenheim <rob.oppenheim at comcast.net>
Subject: Re: [RP TownTalk] Attempt to Repeal Town Crier Code
To: TownTalk <towntalk at riverdale-park.org>
Message-ID: <200512313255.588620 at Rob2>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I welcome constructive criticism. Indeed I encouraged it. I want
to maximize the benefit the Crier provides to our community. 

I started off asking for suggestions on how to improve things,
but I typically got no response. 

So I tried a different approach. I tried "stirring the pot" a little 
by making a change then asking people if they liked it or not, and 
what might be better. This worked quite well in many cases. I learned 
the hard way that it does not always work. If I misjudged the pot's 
energy then stirring it could cause it to boil over with anger and 
frustration.

The question was: how could the Crier BEST support the Farmer's
Market? So I made a change, and asked for feedback. But this was
one of those cases where the pot boiled over. People were simply
not ready to see that change and then discuss what would be best.
So I went back to running the same advertisement each month and
hoped that someday the discussion could be tried again (this time
without first stirring the pot). I do not claim to know what
would be best for the Farmer's Market, but I do think that it is
possible to improve on anything, and a lively but not overheated
discussion could result in a lot better support and possibly even
a lot more attendance at the Market.

The question was never should the Crier support the Farmer's
Market, but how best to support it. 

On Fri, 2 Dec 2005 09:16:22 -0500, Leslie Plant wrote:

>.. I want to see important, animating town activities such as the farmer's 
> market supported in every single issue during the market season....

Thank you for your comments Leslie. The more ideas the better.

At www.rptc.us you can look at the ad and articles that were run
in support of the market for the Jul-Aug issue (page 13). All the
other Criers ran the standard two page Farmer Market advertisement 
that has appeared in the Crier for the last few years. So you see 
every single issue of the Crier did support the Farmer's Market. 

Thanks
- Rob
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