My Talk to Milford Parents

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Last night I had the pleasure of speaking to members of the Milford Parent Leader Training Institute, and came away thoroughly impressed by the dedication of the 20 people in the class.

All of the parent leaders are pitching projects that will benefit their communities. Several of the civic projects are aimed at helping children, especially those in Milford.

A West Haven parent is trying to organize a special education parent group in her city. There were so many great ideas. I know I will be writing numerous stories about their efforts to make the community a better place.

It also made me think that while I do an adequate job of covering the news of the day, i.e. meetings, police, fire, and court news, there is so much more I am missing. I asked the parents to let me know about all of the good things going on in the community.

The parents all asked great questions. They were curious about how to write a letter to the editor, when it would run, and how timely.
Many parents spoke about their preference still for the print product, and I explained it’s a delicate balance. The print product still pays a vast majority of the bills, but the bottom line is we have to and are moving to a digital first mindset. Just the other day a study revealed 30 percent of people get their news from smart phones. It’s clearly where the future is.

Some parents expressed dissatisfaction that it appears only bad news makes the paper. I tried my best to explain that we don’t have an agenda to only write about bad news stories, but the reality is certain stories get read the most, and that does dictate to some extent what we write about.

Unfortunately, this is a business and all former newspaper companies are fighting to remain viable as we move into the future. Everything is changing.
Trust me I have never embraced change, but in the past few years I’ve gone from overseeing a staff of many to doing everything myself in Milford, while embracing social media, blogging, and taking and editing video.

I’m learning on the job as it were so the hope is I will get much better at what I am doing.

Our main goal is to hear from you, and get your feedback on what we’re doing.
Lastly, I want to thank Lesley Darling of the city for inviting me to speak last night. I hope I didn’t put anyone to sleep. I’ve been told I have that uncanny ability at times.

I hope to hear from more and more residents about whatever is on their mind.
The best way to reach me is my email briannhregister@gmail.com, work phone 203-789-5719, Twitter @nhrbmccready, through my blog Milford Matters, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/nhrbmccready.

Thanks,

Brian McCready

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