Third Monthly Milestone Message

Today marks the third month of publication of The Ann Arbor Chronicle. As we have on the previous monthly milestones, we take this opportunity to touch base directly with readers.

We’ve made a couple of minor changes to the layout. The left sidebar is now a bit cleaner, partly because we’ve consolidated some material into the top shaded box.

In response to reader suggestions, we’ve also made the the link to the Tip Jar as prominent as we know how. It’s sitting in the masthead where the news stand price is typically displayed for a printed publication (upper right).

Also based partly on reader input, the frame for the advertisements now contains a link (at the bottom) to a listing of all advertisers. For readers who would like to know who’s supporting The Chronicle financially, this is somewhat more efficient (if less entertaining) than repeatedly hitting the refresh button on a web browser and watching the ads cycle through on their random rotation.

Apropos of advertising, we’ve got a ways to go before advertising revenue will be sufficient to start growing resources so that we can include broader coverage. But we’re emboldened enough by the response so far among readers and advertisers that we’re beginning to contemplate growth in more specific terms.

Broader coverage will mean different things to different people. We could approach it (i) academically: what else should a local paper include? (ii) with focus-groups: what else do people want to read? (iii) by writer interest: what do contributers want to write about?

Any sensible approach to expanded coverage will likely include aspects of all three. But a starting point is to make clear to ourselves what it is we’re doing with our current resources. The disappearance of the section headings from the left sidebar wasn’t just part of a clear-out-the-clutter campaign. (They’re in the footer for readers who did enjoy navigating with them.) We downplayed that taxonomy, because it was apparent to us – and to readers – that those sections don’t reflect very well what we’re doing.

To regular readers, it will be apparent that part of what we do is attend public meetings and report out from them in a fair amount of detail. In that light it would probably make sense to declare Meeting Watch as a section, with subsections for each of the various bodies whose meetings we report: city council, county commission, DDA board, etc.

For one thing, that would free us up to write more interesting headlines than “Meeting Watch: City Council.” Because frankly, these public meetings deserve more interesting headlines than that and probably greater reader interest as well. We don’t report on them just because they’re important, but rather because they’re a window onto our community that is much broader than just the people at the meeting.

But the idea of a Meeting Watch section is just one thought, pretty much off the top of my louse-free head. And what we do already is way more than just attend public meetings. In thinking about expanded coverage, it’s surely a useful tool to think about the section taxonomy. But I also think it’s a more complex issue than: What should the names of the sections really be?

As always, we take readers’ thoughts seriously and would welcome your thoughts on this or other topics, either in the comments section or via private communication.

Thanks for reading.