Thursday, October 05, 2006
Serving you, serving the ELCA better
A question we're always asking ourselves in the News Service of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) is: "How can we serve our constituents better?" That was the subject of a recent planning retreat for the staff of the ELCA News Service.
We agreed that we need to conduct some formal research with a variety of audiences that receive our materials. We're going to ask questions about the kinds of news users want to receive from the ELCA News Service, the ELCA News Web site, story length, news photos, audio news, video news, and the ELCA News Blog. You may be part of the audiences we'll be asking these questions of, and we hope you'll offer us opinions. Of course, I'm always eager to hear from you. Write me with your comments at john.brooks@elca.org
Another new phenomenon you'll notice from us in the coming months is greater use of a variety of methods of telling our stories. We're combining our written news stories with photographs or images, audio cuts and video cuts. We call this "convergence," and we hope that you'll find this method of reporting more interesting.
Finally, we're paying close attention to our working relationship with The Lutheran, the magazine of the ELCA. We're cooperating on more and more projects, and that's a good thing for the church. This month, a staff member with The Lutheran will report for us (and the magazine, of course) when staff of the churchwide organization visit our partners in Lebanon for the first time since the war this summer; one of our staff will report for the magazine (and the News Service) when Presiding Bishop Hanson visits Eastern Europe; and we're releasing jointly a feature story about an ELCA seminarian later this year.
Let me hear from you, and thanks for your interest in the ELCA News Service!
We agreed that we need to conduct some formal research with a variety of audiences that receive our materials. We're going to ask questions about the kinds of news users want to receive from the ELCA News Service, the ELCA News Web site, story length, news photos, audio news, video news, and the ELCA News Blog. You may be part of the audiences we'll be asking these questions of, and we hope you'll offer us opinions. Of course, I'm always eager to hear from you. Write me with your comments at john.brooks@elca.org
Another new phenomenon you'll notice from us in the coming months is greater use of a variety of methods of telling our stories. We're combining our written news stories with photographs or images, audio cuts and video cuts. We call this "convergence," and we hope that you'll find this method of reporting more interesting.
Finally, we're paying close attention to our working relationship with The Lutheran, the magazine of the ELCA. We're cooperating on more and more projects, and that's a good thing for the church. This month, a staff member with The Lutheran will report for us (and the magazine, of course) when staff of the churchwide organization visit our partners in Lebanon for the first time since the war this summer; one of our staff will report for the magazine (and the News Service) when Presiding Bishop Hanson visits Eastern Europe; and we're releasing jointly a feature story about an ELCA seminarian later this year.
Let me hear from you, and thanks for your interest in the ELCA News Service!
