How to get your agenda covered

Bob Rosenbaum

For those who have been most involved in producing the Heights Observer, one frustration arises every month: Readers have a lot of great suggestions for topics we should cover, and we want to pursue them.

We’re facing the reality that we can’t, and have decided not to get frustrated about it.

The Observer is a community newspaper in the truest sense. That means:

  • It has no resources, staff, structure or assets of its own; and no pool of reporters to follow up on great ideas.
  • It’s a collection of individual voices from University Heights and Cleveland Heights. It has no voice of its own: no editorials, no seat of power to determine what will or won't be covered.
  • It runs what people turn in. By contributing –just once or every month– you decide what is covered.
  • Nobody is paid anything to write or edit. Ever. (Our advertising rep earns commission, and the Observer’s nonprofit parent, FutureHeights, dedicates about half the time of its executive director to make sure everything gets done.)
  • A volunteer editorial committee, which reports to the FutureHeights board, provides guidance to help the paper improve.

I think it’s an impressive product for such a loose confederation of individual effort. But I also recognize that not everyone is going to examine how it works. Which is the point of this new, monthly column.

If there is something you’d like to see covered, please jump in and cover it. It’s your paper –to read and write.

Bob Rosenbaum, chairman of the Observer Editorial Committee and a member of the FutureHeights board, has started writing this column to provide transparency about the Observer. If you have questions or comments, send them to bob@therosenbaums.net.

You can write for the Observer by registering at the Observer Member Center: http://heightsobserver.org/members

Bob Rosenbaum

Bob Rosenbaum is a Cleveland Heights resident and chairman of the FutureHeights Observer committee.

Read More on Opening the Observer
Volume 3, Issue 1, Posted 12:11 PM, 02.21.2010