Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: SPAM-LOW: What would you like in your cohousing.org news section

[Pam Rank (pamrank]

I like the format Craig - & I agree - I like the article & think there may be a 
more personalized intimate portrait of cohousing  from online local pubs. 

Different persons are going to respond differently to different articles (how 
many more times can I fit different in this sentence?) so a good cross section 
seems wise. I admit to feeling a little bombarded with bad news lately... keeps 
me awake worrying at night & so some sort of hope - people working, living, 
playing  together to make things better is both a nice break but also hopeful. 
And... from a marketing perspective a positive tool. 

Pam.
Fresno Cohousing, Marketing/Sales

----------------------------------------

From: "Craig Ragland" <craigragland [at] gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2009 11:17 AM
To: Cohousing-L <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
Subject: SPAM-LOW: [C-L]_ What would you like in your cohousing.org news 
section 

Over the past several weeks, since some staff restructuring, I've been
personally managing the "In the News" section.

I'd like to get feedback or suggestions on the editorial approach I'm
taking. Featured News appears on the Cohousing.org home page:

http://www.cohousing.org

This "pane" (about the center of the page) includes a subset of the news
that appeasr on the "Cohousing In the News" page:

http://www.cohousing.org/in_the_news

We "feature" every news item when its first discovered on the home page,
then "unfeature" less substantive items a few days later. This keeps a
portion of the content on Cohousing.org Home Page as fresh as possible. I'm
quite happy with this model, except for the hand-work involved - I'd rather
they auto-expire from the homepage and we may move to that in the future.

My main question is around what to include as "News" - here's an example
article that I'm unclear about including:

http://waldo.villagesoup.com/Community/story.cfm?storyID=141715

Personally, I like it - lots of fun photos, but it does appear in an
online-only, local publication. In the past, for this section, we have only
included news items that have also appeared in print, radio, or on TV - or
content that is connected to larger media outlets. What do you think a shift
to include online publications? Is it time for us to make this transition?

Any insights on how to set a boundary around what online "articles" should
and should not be included?

At this point in time, I'm clear that I don't want Coho/US to make the time
investment required to track or present a running list of the large number
of cohousing blog posts, many of which are blatantly self-promotional. There
may be a place for them on the Cohousing website, but not this particular
section.

Thanks for your attention.

Craig Ragland
Executive Director
Cohousing Association of the United States (Coho/US)
425-487-3550
http://www.cohousing.org
craig [at] cohousing.org

Please consider a gift in support of Coho/US. Click here:
http://www.cohousing.org/contribute

Building a better society, one neighborhood at a time
_________________________________________________________________
Cohousing-L mailing list -- Unsubscribe, archives and other info at: 
http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L/