Help shape our content

Published 5:26 pm Thursday, August 13, 2015

Two weeks in, we hope you’re enjoying the resized and redesigned Farmville Herald.

We appreciate the many readers who’ve called or written to tell us you like it. We value equally those of you who have offered constructive criticism. The two most common complaints have been:

• Size of the type in articles. A few of you with tired eyes like mine told us that you struggled to read our news stories, so effective with last Friday’s edition, we made the type a little larger. It was already a little bigger than before, but we bumped it up even more.

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• Removal of television programming. While a handful of our readers still relied on The Herald to decide what to watch on television, the vast majority of you have moved on to other methods, such as the on-screen programming guides provided by cable and satellite providers, or a multitude of Internet sites that offer that information. The economic principle of supply and demand requires us to invest our resources in content that only we can provide. Simply put, too few of you were still using our TV grids for us to continue to justify the expense of purchasing the information from a syndicate and devoting several pages of newsprint each week to their publication.

That space and money can be redirected to more local news and photographs — our bread and butter as a community newspaper. To that end, we need your help as we work to provide content that is most relevant for the citizens of Prince Edward, Buckingham and Cumberland counties.

We’ve created several ways for you to help shape our content.

You Asked is a standing feature on Wednesday’s front page in which we track down the answer a question posed by a reader. If you’re curious about something in the area, shoot an email to youasked@farmvilleherald.com.

If you’ve got a tip about something newsworthy in the area that we need to write, send it to newstips@farmvilleherald.com.

If a citizen or organization deserves public commendation for an achievement or good deed, nominate them for “Way to Go!” — a spot at the top left of this page dedicated exclusively to such recognition. Make your recommendations at waytogo@farmvilleherald.com.

If your child’s or grandchild’s sports team has not yet been featured on our sports pages, nominate them for “High Five!” and we’ll publish their team photo at the top of the second sports page. Send the photo and description to highfive@farmvilleherald.com.

On this page, we continue to solicit your views on the important issues of the day. Letters and guest columns should be emailed to editor@farmvilleherald.com. Vote in our reader opinion poll at www.FarmvilleHerald.com, or submit a comment for Your Say via our website or social media pages.

If email’s not your thing, give us a call at 392-4151 to take advantage of any of the features described above.

STEVE STEWART is publisher of The Herald. His email address is steve.stewart@farmvilleherald.com.