By JOSEPH KELLARD
Among my goals was to more consistently generate Island Park stories. So in January I wrote a column soliciting contributions from Island Park readers, and slowly but surely they started arriving. Instrumental in this regard were Joe Pontecorvo and Barbra Rubin of the Chamber of Commerce, Board of Education Vice President Mike Hastava and Mayor Jim Ruzicka.
I sat with Ruzicka to do a Q&A after he was elected in March, and he encouraged me to attend village board meetings, which have proved to be a font of stories.
Along with my increased coverage of Island Park, I decided to make the Q&A format an occasional feature. In addition to my talk with the mayor, I also interviewed Rubin, which led, in part, to my decision to name her the Herald¹s Person of the Year, and Alan Meyers, a disabled Vietnam veteran who I¹d become acquainted with from a previous story. Now I¹d like to do Q&As on a more consistent basis, but cast my net wider to include not only prominent people but, say, teenagers in our communities who¹d like some say about issues in Oceanside and Island Park.
Another of the paper¹s developments I¹m most satisfied with is the considerable increase in the volume of letters to the editor from local residents this year. People exercise their right to free speech by writing opinionated letters, and the Herald provides a forum in which their ideas can be read by many more people than they might otherwise reach ‹ an important feature of any newspaper, and particularly a community-oriented one.
It used to be that the Oceanside-Island Park Herald, in contrast to some of our 15 other editions like Long Beach and Merrick, would get a letter to the editor maybe once a month. Over roughly the past eight months, however, I¹ve received at least one letter a week, and sometimes several more, in the mail or from e-mailers on a range of topics. Many were responding to stories I¹d written, including the potential closing of the Arrow Street footbridge and, particularly, the posting of new stop signs at Waukena and Ocean avenues in Oceanside.
This taught me a lesson. Writing columns about local rather than national issues seems to generate more written response from readers. Over the last half of this year, I cut back on writing columns, mainly because I wanted to focus on generating better news stories. But I¹ll still aim to write a more regular column, especially on issues important to Oceansiders and Island Parkers.
This year, more readers called, e-mailed or mailed me information, tips and suggestions about issues or people they believed worthy of readers¹ attention. These welcome contributions have given me much more material than I can possibly get to, but this is certainly a more desirable state than being strapped for stories. Above all, it allows me the opportunity to have a selection of stories to cover.
One such story came when a resident called to let me know about the goings-on at the Long Beach Motor Inn. The Island Park lodge on Austin Boulevard had seen a dramatic increase in homeless residents since the Oceanside Motel closed last year. After I wrote ³Second coming of Oceanside Motel?,² a few of the motor inn¹s neighbors contacted the Herald to thank me for bringing this issue to light.
Contributions from readers lend themselves to one important, ongoing goal: finding new and interesting stories to write, rather than covering the same stories I¹ve done time and again over the years. Sure, some stories are interesting enough to me and important enough to the community that they deserve repeating, and others need to be updated, all of which I try to do with a new angle. But I prefer original issues and stories, and while my job is to find them, readers¹ contributions often prove invaluable.
A few new freelance writers and columnists have also helped me expand the paper¹s coverage this year. While longtime freelancer Justin Smulison continues to contribute articles when his busy work schedule allows ‹ and now offers an occasional column on his experiences as a stand-up comedian ‹ I was able to bring onboard a few others writers, from college students to a school teacher. One student, Jenna Telesca, an enthusiastic and hard-working freelancer, will continue to contribute profiles from Chicago during the spring semester.
David Lurie and Nicole Sweeney, two Oceanside High School students, and Bridie Garcia, an Island Park resident who graduated from West Hempstead High School in June, all provided columns that helped bring to our paper a much-needed teen perspective on important issues. While Bridie went off to collage, I look forward to more well-written, sometimes controversial, columns from both David and Nicole.
Also, I think the appearance of all of our Herald papers has improved this year. In July we moved into brand new offices in Garden City, and the layout of our colorful new digs has enabled the editorial and art departments to coordinate our work with greater ease and efficiency, which has improved the look of the papers.
We now feature full-color front pages each week, and with our new presses we¹re able to run more color advertisements, which brightens our pages and gives us the option of offering more color photos inside. Moreover, under the direction of Photo Editor Diane Rice, our photographers are capturing better, more creative images, and even I tried my hand at some picture-taking this year. With the help of a better camera, I hope to include more spectacular shots in 2007.
All in all, I think the Oceanside-Island Park Herald, along with all our other papers, has grown considerably this year, and I hope to continue to nurture that growth through the coming year.
Comments about this column? JKellard@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 287.
