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The T-A needs your help

—Editorial


The rebooted Escondido Times-Advo­cate has been around for a few weeks and we’ve been getting good reviews from most of the people that read it. Now, we would like to take things to a new level.

We have some obvious weaknesses. It’s difficult to cover the news when you only come out every other week. That means that any breaking news we cover will of necessity be covered first in our online edi­tion. You can help by contacting us when you are aware of breaking or other news in the area. Our staff is small, so we rely on our loyal readers to alert us to things that we might miss.

My motto is that everybody is a reporter for the Times-Advocate. That’s what com­munity journalism is all about in the mod­ern age. In the old days, the days that our columnist Ron Kenney writes about, the community newspaperman with the short pencil stuck behind his ear or the commu­nity newspaperwoman poised at her stan­dard typewriter, would just walk down the street to get the news, or pick up the phone, or hang out at the barbershop or ice cream shop. Today is much different. We need your help.

That brings us to church or religious news. This week we have our first church news story, about an Easter service at a new church in town, Sanctuary Church. We’d like to get more church news, but we can only get it if the churches provide it to us or alert us to things that are happen­ing.

Escondido has a very strong religious community. We would love to serve it.

Club news is another source that we’d like to tap. We know that Kiwanis, Rotary and Lions clubs abound in Escondido. They are the beating heart of any commu­nity, especially one such as Escondido. The Jaycees, for example, put on the Christmas parade each year. These organizations do a lot of good works and it is important to highlight what they do by printing photos, club news and features about upcoming events. But that’s a two way street! Service clubs, have someone in your club email us to alert us what’s going on. We are happy to visit your club and tell you how to get things into the paper.

We also print social news, such as wed­dings, births, anniversaries and birthdays. Nothing says community like opening the pages of your local newspaper and seeing the sweet face of a newborn peering out at you, or the contented and excited smile of a married or engaged couple.

We are attempting to bring high school sports back to the community, and for that to happen we really need your help. We don’t have enough people to cover all of the games of four high schools. We need reporters, preferably young high school or college students who have the itch to write about sports and to see their work in print.

Once we get enough loyal readers and the advertisers that come with them, we hope to be able to begin printing a weekly newspaper. So if you see an ad in the pa­per from someone you do business with, please contact him or her and say thanks for making this newspaper possible. If you do business with someone who doesn’t ad­vertise, please tell them that you’d like to see their ad in the paper to show their sup­port for local news.

The more readers we get, the more ad­vertisers we will get and the more pages we will have, printing ever more news. That’s how it has always worked. Even in today’s online environment, plenty of people like to pick up a physical newspaper. Others like to read the news on their computers or mobile platforms. When you combine the two, with ads that are printed both media, you have the best of both worlds.

If you like what we do. If you would like to see more, then please support us with your submissions, your moral support and you word of mouth. Tell people about us. You don’t have to spend a dime. Just pick up a copy of the paper and share it.

We’ll see you on the pages of the printed Times-Advocate and at www.Times-Advocate.com



*Note: Opinions expressed by columnists and letter writers are those of the writers and not necessarily those of the newspaper.

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