A Beginning: Behind the Scenes at the American Fork Weekly Gazette

by David Rodeback

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

We're building a new electronic news service just for American Fork. You'll want to subscribe, but we thought you also might like to watch.

Several weeks ago, after long reflection, I decided that other projects needed the time I have been spending on American Fork politics and government and other local topics at LocalCommentary.com, particularly at my blog. After that, but before my verbose, multipart announcement and explanation of that decision at my blog, a completely new project popped up.

One Daniel Riewe (a pen name, pronounced as "Reeve"), a relatively new resident of American Fork and a Delta Airlines pilot, e-mailed me to tell me he enjoyed my blog and wondered if I might be interested in something he was starting in his spare time (not his cockpit time!). Noting the absence of a local newspaper, after the American Fork Citizen's demise, and considering also the understandable limitations of American Fork coverage in other cities' newspapers (the Daily Herald, the Deseret News, and the Salt Lake Tribune) -- he decided to charge into the breach. He didn't know then that I was already partially retreating from the breach and wishing someone else would step in.

The project is The American Fork Weekly Gazette -- a name with some local history we'll review one of these days. I'd call it a newspaper, but there's no paper involved. It's an all-electronic news service. At its heart, it's a weekly e-mail message with stories related to American Fork. So far, Daniel has written almost all of them, but he talked me into writing one a few weeks ago. There's also a Web site, where you'll find the same current stories, a good archive of past stories, and a link for subscribing to the weekly e-mail delivery.

Daniel and I exchanged some e-mails, then met for a long lunch or two and discussed the possibilities. Now he and I are the Editorial Board. We really are just getting started. For now, at least, we don't see this as a profit-making venture, but as a useful civic activity. Part of its appeal to me is that it is picking up part of the role I decided to drop at LocalCommentary.com -- news and information about American Fork -- and already doing it better in some ways. And it doesn't rely entirely on me, which is a major advantage for almost any venture. I'll probably do some more writing from time to time, but mostly I'm doing other things, such as setting up this blog, which at least for a while will be hosted at LocalCommentary.com. I don't know whether the sort of American Fork-related commentary and analysis I just stopped doing at my blog will ever appear in the Gazette; if some does, I don't expect to be writing it.

Now, about this blog. This is not where we're publishing the news stories. Here the story is not the news itself. It's the project of building and running a local news service. We've never done this precise thing before, and we think that some glimpses behind the scenes might be interesting to more than ourselves. And you've probably already guessed another motive: we think blogging about the experience might pull in some subscribers to the Gazette and also help us recruit some talented American Forkers to help with various parts of the project. If you're a writer, photographer, Web guru, or journalism student; if you're interested in American Fork; and if you think you might like to help a little or a lot . . .

I'll bet we can find something useful for you to do. There aren't many tangible benefits, except that you've been wanting to get more involved in the community, and this is one way to do it. And among the myriad ways people find to get their names and work in print, helping out at the American Fork Weekly Gazette is a fairly positive choice. It's a lot less likely to get you incarcerated than, say, stealing a Volvo.

At the very least, we're betting than you'll want to subscribe. You can do that here. Right now, we e-mail the Gazette to you on Friday afternoons. Down the road, the day of the week could change, or we could move to two mailings a week, or something different.

If you like what you see -- both the reality and the potential -- the next thing you might to do is help us "go viral." In other words, tell your friends, so they can subscribe, too, and so they can tell their friends.

If you find that you want to do more than that, use one of the links to the right to contact either member of the Editorial Board.

Daniel and I will be blogging here periodically about our adventures. Let us know if you find it interesting, or if you have specific questions or suggestions.