Watch Us Grow!

By Cindy Gomez
Editor

What’s New?

Last month, The Little Paper That Could celebrated its sweet sixteen. But the lasting power of the HPR isn’t the only thing we need to celebrate. We’ve had numerous changes which merit review and discussion.

You’ve likely noticed that beginning this year we’ve added new writers and new content like Femolution, the Gay Agenda, Contact Sports, Food-O-Pedia, the Gastronomic Files, and Psy-chic to name just a few. We were just getting rolling.

Color on all pages: We now have the ability to print in color on any and every page of the HPR. This means more tantalizing and eye popping layouts, photos, and ads for our readers and our advertisers.

The People’s Press Project

We have always prided ourselves on being a locally run community newspaper that develops and encourages journalism from community members as well as students from all four colleges in the region. We are also immensely proud to feature art, graphic design, photos, and stories about our region and its people; to be a newspaper that truly reflects the diverse community in which it is based.

That is why it was a natural progression of our body of work to initiate a non-profit side to the High Plains Reader called the People’s Press Project (PPP). This new non-profit arm of the HPR is a media justice organization that will focus on access, engagement, and development of journalists and media.

To that end, this year alone the PPP has held four media trainings, added three new forms of media for HPR’s website (podcasts, videocasts, streaming music), lobbied twice on behalf of North Dakota and Minnesota, and will today—for the first time—be videocasting public school board meetings.  Next, the PPP hopes to begin recording Human Rights meetings in Fargo and Moorhead. And that is in addition to the many photography, journalism, design, PR, web and layout students we help develop skills and work portfolios using the HPR as their training grounds.

Editorials

Many of you may have noticed that we’ve removed the comments feature from our website. Voicing opinions takes courage, and is commendable. We like to hear from our readers, but not from bullies hiding behind the cloak of anonymity. Therefore, we encourage you to write letters to the editor or post your comments on our Facebook page.

A surefire way to get your letter printed is to adhere to some basic guidelines.  You will find that my recommendations will not only help you get published with HPR, but by other publications as well.

1)  Keep it short and simple: Stick with one main idea and write no more than 400 words. We like to publish as many letters as possible, so the shorter your letter, the more room for others. Don’t see your letter? Check online: many letters that don’t make it into our print version can be found online. Once you send us a story or a letter for publication, keep in mind that we reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.

2) No unnecessary roughness: Letters that are libelous or full of foul language will not make it into the HPR. We know you’re passionate, but let’s keep it clean!

3) Don’t send us form letters:  Many people use effective letter writing to campaign for issues and causes. Sending the same letter to 20 papers might be time-saving, but simply does not work for the HPR. Our paper prides itself on all original content. Sometimes we might not notice that we’ve received a form letter and print them by accident. However, as a rule we request exclusive content. If someone gives you a form letter to sign and send out, re-write the letter, using your own thoughts and words. Make sure you personalize it and include the relevancy to the HPR readers.

Numbers

This week we at HPR passed the mark of 10,000 members on our website. We’re very proud of that. We’ve produced 125 website editions, or two years and six months worth, and in that time we’ve published the work of 212 writers. We’ve been blessed with an embarrassment of talent; among our contributors have been some of the best and best-known writers and journalists in Minnesota and North Dakota. We won’t mention names because we are more proud of the number itself: two hundred twelve, and we’ll match that total against any other newspaper in the state.

Ten thousand now in the HPR family. A sobering number. We owe every one of you the best paper we can produce and we’re going to do even better. You can hold us to that. 

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