Earlier this year during festival season, using this editorial space, we invited readers to share photos and short news items about the Ukrainian festivals in their areas. We reasoned that since we listed 51 festivals in the 2017 edition of our annual special supplement called “A Ukrainian Summer,” there should be a lot to report from all over North America. The message of the editorial was this: Tell us, and our readers, all about it! Some of you, we’re happy to say, took us up on the offer and did send in wonderful high-quality photos that filled an entire color page in one of our issues. (There’s an example in this week’s issue on page 11.)
Now that a new year of community activity is in full swing after the summer, we again invite readers to become our partners in sharing news about your community in our community newspaper. Sure, some communities and organizations have their own e-mailed newsletters or Facebook pages, and that is commendable. Yet, many of them don’t see fit to send in information to The Ukrainian Weekly, whose goal is to unite our community. We urge you to extend your reach, broaden your circle of contacts and become part of the historical record by sending information to this newspaper, whose online archives are, simply put, invaluable. All but the current year’s issues (which require an online subscription) are freely available to all. (See www.ukrweekly.com. By the way, you get four free views of current articles before the paywall kicks in.)
Here are a few suggestions that will help get your information published in The Weekly as expeditiously as possible: always put a byline (the name of the writer) atop your story; don’t forget to write captions for each photo sent and credit the photographer (NB: the credit goes to the person who took the photo, not the owner of the camera or smartphone). Since the vast majority of news items sent to us these days come via e-mail (please use [email protected]), we also advise: send stories as simple documents (not pdfs); send only good-quality, high-resolution photos as jpgs; and label the photos and captions so they match each other (either by name or number). Please include your daytime phone number and e-mail address so that we may contact you for more information or clarifications (e-mail is best). Expect us to work with you to make your submission informative, accurate and interesting for other readers. That’s our job as editors. (Yes, we do have “many opinions,” as one sender complained when we asked for several clarifications. And, no, materials do not go into our paper “untouched” by an editor.)
And, here’s just one more bit of advice: If we haven’t acknowledged receiving your message within a week after you’ve sent it, please do inquire to make sure it was indeed received. Unfortunately, we’ve seen instances when messages were somehow lost in cyberspace… While we may not acknowledge receiving materials immediately after you’ve sent them – due to deadline pressures here and because we want to take a look at the whole package sent before responding – if you’ve not heard from us days later, we will be grateful that you contacted us to ask.
Thanks for “listening.” We hope to hear from you soon, and regularly!