Community News
Filed under Newsletters
Ever notice that when you have something that needs to be done you find yourself doing all kinds of other things? Call it procrastination, call it what you will, but when I face that blank page I am suddenly aware of all kinds of other “more important” things that need to be done. Which is why I suddenly began cleaning out old files on my computer. In doing so I came across the following link to an article that appeared in the Alief-Southwest edition of the Chronicle some time back. It really got me to thinking:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nb/alief/news/6132083.html
This is the link to a story the Chron did about our early work forming the Greater Mission Bend Area Council. I came across it while cleaning out some files. Of course it is only one of several stories published in the Chronicle’s neighborhood edition that covered our work. There is no doubt our work would have been a lot more difficult without this vital coverage. It is such a shame that Mission Bend no longer has this valuable resource.
Of course, in a classic CYA move the Chron proudly told us that we would be getting coverage on their web site. As we have found out the hard way the Chron Alief web site is a joke. No one reads it. This has been such a loss to our work. We are hampered in our ability to get information out to our community. The Chron keeps cutting back and they lose readers every time they do so. I have several neighbors who cancelled their subscription when the neighborhood edition was cancelled. Then the Chronicle management wonders why circulation is declining.
Moreover, this certainly hurts the advertising for West Oaks Mall. As you know, West Oaks Mall is our community’s largest retail outlet and is undergoing a major renovation. You can get information about this at the web site at http://www.shopwestoaksmall.com/mimages/factsheets.pdf. The local community is absolutely in the dark about developments at the mall. We are a community of 60,000 citizens with no meaningful media coverage. Interesting management philosophy.
I was reminded of this following our successful Town Hall Meeting with Fort Bend District Attorney John Healey. Of course he is only one of a number of public officials who have come to speak with us, including County Judges Ed Emmett and Bob Hebert as well as Sheriffs Milton Wright and Adrian Garcia, representing both the counties in which our community resides. Since we have launched our own community website we certainly don’t need the Chron’s Alief page. We probably get more people logging on to our site than does the Chon. Nevertheless this does not give us anywhere near the community exposure that the Alief-Southwest neighborhood edition once did.
As a result of this, I plan to meet with the publisher of a neighborhood newsletter which already provides coverage for the largest homeowner association in Mission Bend. It is very professionally done. I want to explore expanding its publication so that all our citizens will once again be informed of events in the Greater Mission Bend Area. All this is a reminder of the challenges we face in getting our message out to our community. Again, that is 60,000 residents. We are a community larger than Galveston, TX. We no longer can count on the Chronicle, and that hurts.
Mike Martin, President, GMBAC