EDITOR’S NOTE: Community listings getting re-organized.
By: Hank Kalet
We’ve been making some changes on our social page.
With the arrival of new Social Editor Kara Fitzpatrick also comes a renewed focus on revamping the manner in which we present community listings, with an eye toward using our space more efficiently and making our listings easier for our readers to use.
To that end, we have begun the process of moving from an organization-based way of organizing our listings to a calendar-based approach.
We’ve been running a "Things to Do" calendar for quite a while that includes those events that are open to the public. "Things to Do" generally covers about two weeks of events this week’s includes events through Christmas.
Recently, we’ve decided to use the "Things to Do" model for other listings, including seniors-only and religious events, ongoing classes and seminars.
The changes have caused some confusion among the groups that send us press releases. We’ve received several calls from organizations saying that their releases had not run. In some cases, they had, just not in the form the groups were used to seeing; in other cases, the releases had not run because the events being noted were not to take place for quite some time.
This doesn’t meant the releases won’t run. They will. We just can’t guarantee that they will run as early and as often as we may have run them in the past.
There are two basic reasons, as I said. First, there is a limited amount of space available for stories, calendars and photos what we call the newshole. And there is competition for the space. We not only need to make room for event-announcements, but for breaking news, obituaries, letters to the editor, sports events, graduation announcements and all of the other information that our readers expect to find in The Cranbury Press.
By condensing our calendar information down to its essentials date, time, location, brief description we can free up space for other things.
We also want to make sure that the information we present is presented in as useful a manner as possible. The reader looking for something to do over the weekend is more likely to turn to "Things to Do" than "Library News," while someone looking for a class on computers can now turn to "Classes and Forums," without having to know whether such a class might be offered at the library or another organization.
We will continue to run "Press People," "Military Matters," "On Campus" and other social columns that highlight the accomplishments of local residents.
In the end, we believe the changes we are making will only improve the social pages and the entire newspaper.
The Editor’s Note column will run as often as necessary as a way to explain the workings of The Cranbury Press to our readers. So, please, send me your questions about the paper, about the news business, about the decisions we’ve made and any suggestions you have. I’ll try and answer as many as I can in future Editor’s Notes. Call me at (732) 329-9214, write me at P.O. Box 309, Dayton, N.J. 08810 or e-mail me at [email protected].

