Editorial

Fidonews Direction

I didn't get an operator's manual when Henk turned Fidonews over to me, so cut me some slack if I make a mistake or two along the way. For the moment, I have no "admin" address (though I did communicate with Bob Satti about the change and got a response). Nor am I sure if the "editor@fidonews.org" address is pointed in my direction yet or not. [Yes, the forward is adjusted and should work. [jb]] Please use one of the addresses in the above banner for your letters or article submissions for now.

I'm expecting TIC distribution of Fidonews to be working for this issue. Though untested until this release, George Peace has changed his configuration so that I may hatch into the FIDONEWS file area. From George, distribution should be the same as it's been, since Henk was releasing to George also.

I'm not sure if the HTML page at fidonet.org will be working right away or not. Both Henk and I posted to Jim Barchuk telling him of the editor change, but I haven't seen a response from him as of Sunday morning. I'll be sending Jim a copy via internet email and hoping for the best :)

But those are present concerns, and this is supposed to be about direction, which concerns the future. In general, I'm pleased with the tradition of Fidonews as a free press and plan to continue that tradition. This means that there is no official Fidonews position on issues, only the position of the individuals who editorialize on those issues. It further means that I won't be rejecting any contributions because I may disagree with the writer.

For a free press to work, it requires input from many so that it doesn't degrade into a mere soapbox for the editor. This seems intuitive for political commentary, but it's even true for objective reporting - the decision as to what news to present shouldn't rest with just the editor. To this end, I'd like to encourage contributions from the folks reading Fidonews (I know there's a bunch of you)... these contributions might be in the form of article submissions or in the form of feedback.

Watch the FIDONEWS echo for a discussion on direction. I'll be asking for feedback on some of my ideas, and hoping that YOU will have some ideas to contribute. Here's an initial list of ideas I'll be posting for feedback:

• Add a section to the masthead listing the Fidonews Staff. This is somewhat complicated right now because there is no staff (though Joe Jared has taken upon himself to keep up some of the internet information and should be in there). The Staff would be a list of frequent contributors with node numbers and email addresses as well as a descriptive title. Staff members could identify their work with a simple byline, confident that their contact information is already listed.
• Solicit a Bureau Chief from each zone to report on happenings in that zone.
• Encourage Zone Coordinators to publish "state of the Zone" articles for all readers.
• Publish internet listings only when updated rather than every issue.
• Further reduce masthead clutter.
• Solicit someone from the FTSC to write a series on "FTSC for the Complete Idiot"... something that even *I* can understand.