Please consider this week’s column a love letter to you, dear reader.
As I brought up a few weeks ago in this space, we’ve gone through some pretty dramatic changes at the ol’ Kinston Daily Free Press lately. For better or worse, more changes are coming — but with your help, I’m hoping it’s all for the better.
We will be holding a series of focus groups on Tuesday, June 4 at the Pride of Kinston building on Queen Street and I’d love for you to attend. We’re going to be talking about ways to improve this paper you’re holding in your hands or reading online. There are three separate groups going to be held that day — from 8-9:30 a.m., from 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. and from 5:30-7 p.m.
I will be assisting in those meetings and I want you to come to one of the groups. We are going to be talking about a multitude of ways to make your newspaper better, but we need to hear from real people from right here in Lenoir, Greene and Jones counties, not some overpaid newspaper “expert” who doesn’t know what the heck our readers want.
As my good friend Richard Clark is fond of saying, “Don’t get this twisted;” I know whose newspaper this is. Although Halifax Media Group technically owns The Free Press, it’s you, dear reader that pays our salaries, reads our stories and buys our ads.
Please take 90 minutes out of your day on Tuesday, June 4 and meet with us; we’ll provide some tasty snacks, some good company and you’ll leave with the knowledge you helped make your Free Press a better product. If you’d like to participate, you can reach me by any of the methods listed below.
I look forward to seeing you.
NEWSPAPERS FOR VETERANS: Whilst I have your attention, I have another favor to ask. As you know, one of the great new additions to Kinston and Lenoir County is the new N.C. State Veterans Home. At present, there are about 10 of our nation’s heroes living in the beautiful new facility, although officials are anticipating up to 100 moving in within a year or so.
One of the requests that have been made from management of the facility is for newspapers for the veterans to read every morning.
If you’d like to provide newspapers for the veterans, please contact Free Press Circulation Director Jim Register at 252-559-1065 and he’ll tell you how you can help. We’ll recognize those who help provide newspapers for our veterans in a future edition of the Daily Free Press.
LETTERS TO EDITOR: One final note — I love reading letters to the editor and printing them in The Free Press. I encourage anyone who’d like to write one to please do so.
However, there is a strict 300-word limit for the letters for a reason; in the past two weeks, we’ve received letters with four or five times that amount of words — even one with 5,222 words! If we printed that letter, it’d eat up more than two and a half pages.
Please write to us … but remember that brevity is better.
Bryan Hanks is the managing editor of The Free Press and his column appears in this space every Sunday. You can reach him at 252-559-1074 or at Bryan.Hanks@Kinston.com. Follow him on Twitter at BCHanks.
