BENNETT'S MINUTES: Reader help sought for possible changes

I started working in the newspaper industry 41 years ago as a senior in high school, and a lot has obviously changed since then.

As a part-time sports reporter at the Terre Haute Tribune-Star, we had to type our stories on actual paper using actual typewriters and those sheets were fed through one of the few kinds of computers in existence at that time. To make any corrections to what we had typed, without having to type it over again, we used a black marker to draw a line through the text to be ignored and typed in the replacement words above -- with a “cent” sign before and after that new text. Those words made it to a machine that printed out the type in one long column, and eventually placed on a page.

Clearly, things have changed a lot. While our computers are not as young or powerful as we wished, they allow us to create pages in Brazil and send them through an online process to Greencastle where our paper is printed.

The Internet has obviously changed how we do business, but at the end of the day there is still a desire for local news that we aim to fill every day.

One thing that has not changed over time, though, is the strong attachment that many people still have toward their hometown newspaper. While the numbers of papers sold may not be as high as they once were, people still care about what happens.

One of my goals as editor of the Brazil Times will be to ask for your input as often as possible before making any changes, and use it to help determine the best path. Obviously, satisfying everyone is impossible.

I think any problems that newspaper have with their readership stem from a lack of understanding of how and why things are done, or not done, and I also hope to provide you with insight on some of the steps in our processes.

I have now worked at four different newspapers, and at the first three grudges were commonplace. Numerous times I talked to people who do not take or read the paper, and I asked them why. “I’ll never forget when I was in high school they always covered the other schools more than us” is a common answer.

Sometimes I know the answer to the time frame being talked about, and it seems hard to believe that anyone could still be angry over something that happened at a newspaper 30 years ago. But they exist.

Another of my hopes is that you will let bygones be bygones and give our newspaper another chance if you felt wronged by something done by someone long ago who has no connection to the product today.

Comics/puzzles

One of the first attempts at measuring interest in our content started over the weekend, when posts were made both on our website (www.thebraziltimes.com) and our Facebook page.

We are looking into making changes to our comics/puzzles page, and the initial changes being considering are removing the comics and/or the TV schedule grid and adding additional puzzles to the ones we currently have.

NOTE: We know the puzzles are very popular. They are not being removed from the newspaper, and if anything changes there either will be additional new puzzles or multiple opportunities to complete your favorite ones.

(I frequently will have “sidebar” discussions somewhat related, but away from the main point, when talking to people. This is one of those times.)

Funny story about online polls. I have not done them very often, or had a reason to, but I remember seeing them on Facebook in the past. Maybe restaurants asking customers about menu items, or things like that. I looked through the Facebook page for a long time on Saturday night to find out how to add a poll, and could not find any results. I then “Googled” the topic and found a lot of outdated solutions which no longer applied.

I finally stumbled across the solution, in which Facebook has partnered with an off-site company to provide poll content for its members.

I created a poll with the three questions I wanted to ask, placed it on our Facebook page as the instructions said and it looked great.

I then tried to determine how I could find the results to each question, and soon discovered that these are “free” polls that only provide users with 40 total responses before a subscription is required. I would have been willing to pay a fee for one month to squeeze in any polls I wanted to use, but that option was not available. The only options were a one-poll fee of $49 or a yearly subscription of $96. Those numbers seemed high to me.

Twitter allows users to create polls for free, so I put the two multiple choice questions on my Twitter account with links to them from the weekend story on our website (and this story, as well).

1. https://twitter.com/joeybbennett/status/1317687472986480640?s=20

2. https://twitter.com/joeybbennett/status/1317687176688242689?s=20

The story is posted on our Facebook page, also.

Those two questions were about how often (always, seldom or never) do readers utilize the TV grid and read the comics. The other question was about puzzles, and if any changes need to be made to that lineup.

Our current puzzles are the Crossword, Soduku, Concepts Kakuro and Cryptoquip. Readers are being asked if they want that lineup to stay the same, if there are any they would like to see replaced or if are there any we don’t currently have that they’d like to see.

Those comments will need to be left on our Facebook page or on our website.

Again, we are not removing the puzzles. If any changes happen and something else is removed, there would either be new puzzles added to the lineup or readers would have multiple opportunities to complete their favorites.

For full disclosure, we understand that older readers who are not as technologically active may not see either our website or Facebook page. In that event, send your thoughts to editor.braziltimes@gmail.com.

thebraziltimes.com

Last week, I made a trip back to Greencastle to get some help from my former colleague/boss Jared Jernagan on better streamlining our website, and it was very helpful.

Nothing of significance was added to the site, but some seemingly minor changes were made to make it easier to navigate. Each various section of the newspaper will now have its most recent additions visible, with smaller links to stories a little bit older and a hyperlink at the bottom to “read archived stories” from longer ago.

If you were on the site over the weekend, you may have noticed the “BREAKING NEWS” alert used to highlight top stories. This will be an excellent feature to attract attention to the items most likely to have the biggest audience.

In going through the various parts of the website, it was interesting to see the category headings for information that the Internet has made less desirable for newspaper readers. Topping that list were letters to the editor, birth announcements and wedding announcements.

Facebook, in particular, is a forum in which people can now either vent their frustrations on certain topics in the comment section or announce changes in their family structure.

One problem, though, is that everyone doesn’t utilize Facebook. We will publish these at no charge, and feel free to send them to us.

Submitting information

It’s always good to review the best ways for readers/organizations to submit information to us.

During my time in sports, I always told my coaches to send me their information in the manner that suited them.

That’s mostly my theory here, but some methods do not work as well as others.

Photos -- The best method possible is to send as an e-mail attachment. If taken on a phone, e-mailing it from that device would save you some time.

It’s amazing that fax machines still exist, but there are rare instances in which they are helpful. Submitting photos is not one of those.

News items -- Sending articles/releases via e-mail is the preferred method. Attaching as a Word document works well, or you can just copy and paste the information into the body of the e-mail. Attaching PDF files is not as easy for us, since we basically have to undo all the steps you went through to make it a PDF in order to get what we need.

Some of the e-mails previously used to submit information to the Brazil Times are still valid, while others are no longer available to us. Please use the address mentioned elsewhere in this column if you are no longer able to submit information the previous way.

Honor rolls

Easily the topic that has come up the most in my short time in Brazil has been about school honor rolls.

The short version is this: We will run any honor rolls submitted by any schools in Clay County, and make them available to readers for free on our website.

The problem is that some schools choose to not provide us with this information, and that is their right. If your school does not make this information available to us and you want to see it, then the best course is to contact your child’s principal and request that the information be sent to us.

Writers sought

We are on the lookout for people willing to work as correspondents for both news and sports.

No one will get rich doing this, but we are looking to expand what gets covered by adding additional people and keeping our staff from working 70-hour weeks.

If interested, please contact me at editor.braziltimes@gmail.com.