Are you a wired journalist?

Here's a challenge from journalism blogger Howard Owens, to make yourself a wired journalist in 2008 and possibly save your career. He's even offering a $100 Amazon gift certificate for a journalist who completes his 11 objectives. Even if you don't go for the moolah, this is a nice little test to see how much of this you're doing. I got six out of the 11, and some new ideas. Good stuff.

Winter newsletter

NINA's winter newsletter will be mailed to your newsrooms in early January, but it's available as a printable PDF file HERE right now for the low, low price of ... nothing.

In this issue: Messages from incoming president Sharon Boehlefeld and outgoing president Greg Rivara; a column by me about writing trend stories from a ground-level view; and other assorted useful bits of information.

'Our Hidden Poor'

If you haven't seen this already, take a look at the Chicago Tribune's recent project, "Our Hidden Poor." The individual stories from around Illinois are compelling, and there's also a terrific audio slideshow with b/w photojournalism by Kuni Takahashi. This is worth your time.

Any newspaper could come up with series like this. Think about people in your community whose stories could be tied together with a common thread. Maybe it's as simple as people who plow snow; or you could go broader, to public servants in various walks of life. Maybe it's kids working their first jobs; or retirees working for various reasons. Maybe it's people who end up at your area's homeless shelter.

Or, you do what the Tribune did: Identify a trend and then put faces on that trend. High gasoline prices, for instance. Show the effect on a variety of people and industries. Or slow home sales: find a range of people who are frustrated trying to sell their houses. Or, in an area where real-estate values have skyrocketed, find people who grew up there but now that they're on their own, can't afford to live there.

Endless possibilities here. The key is, these are ground-level stories about people, rather than just aerial views of trends.

Building a mojo kit

If your paper is thinking about inexpensive ways to get into multimedia reporting, here's a post from Bryan Murley at Eastern Illinois University. Bryan is talking about placing a mojo (mobile journalist) kit in the hands of each student in a class, but this could easily apply to newsrooms.

Bottom line: One complete kit can be assembled for less than $400. Bryan even provides links to each product.

Voter registration

With the earlier primary (Feb. 5) for Illinois this year, voter registration could get lost amid the holidays. The Illinois deadline is Tuesday, Jan. 8. Here's a link to the State Board of Elections site with all the information. It also has a downloadable registration form that people can fill out and turn in to their county clerk's office. Good stuff to share with your readers.

Ice Storm

The Dec. 14 installment of Al's Morning Meeting from The Poynter Institute gives some great ideas for covering snowstorms.
I've seen many, many people (me among them) outside this week in northern Illinois, taking photos of spectacular, ice-covered trees. Are any of your papers inviting readers to send you their photos? If so, post a comment below with a link to the online album.
Any other innovative, weather-related coverage worth noting?

ICPA Job Fair

TheIllinois College Press Association is planning its annual convention and job fair for Friday, Feb. 22, 2008, at the Chicago City Centre. This is a great opportunity for employers to find more than 100 of the state's top college journalists all in one room and available for 15-minute interviews.

If your new newspaper would like to consider sending an interviewer, click here for an invitation letter and a participation form.

Shaw buys DeKalb County papers

From today's Northwest Herald:
Privately owned Shaw Newspapers, owner of the Northwest Herald, announced Tuesday that it had bought the publications of Northern Illinois Publishing from publicly traded Lee Enterprises.
Shaw Newspapers, a 156-year-old, family-owned media company, acquired the Daily Chronicle, located in DeKalb; The MidWeek weekly; and affiliated publications.

Full story

New and improved contest results

This has taken some time and effort by several people, but the NINA Web site now has photos of almost all of the first-place winning entries from this year's contest. They're scans, so some are more readable than others. You can find them here.

Fall Conference: Your thoughts?

We'd appreciate your feedback on the Oct. 26 Fall Conference at NIU. Was it useful for you? Are there aspects you would change?

And, do you have suggestions for conference / workshop topics for 2008? Please let us know.

NINA contest results

Results from this year's NINA contest are posted here. Congrats to the winners and thanks to everyone who entered, and to everyone who attended Friday's conference at NIU.

Registration deadline approacheth

Don't forget to register for the NINA Fall Conference and Awards Luncheon, set for next Friday, Oct. 26, at NIU-DeKalb. Registration deadline is Friday, Oct. 19. All information and registration forms are on our Web site.

Parking is included in your registration fee. Use the NIU visitor lot (follow the signs off Lincoln Highway) and tell the attendant you're part of the NINA Conference.

All conference sessions are in the Holmes Student Center, adjacent to the parking lot. The morning sessions are on the second floor. Follow the signs once you're in the building. Lunch is in the Regency Room.

NINA Swap Meet

NINA's Oct. 26 Fall Conference is a swap meet. We'll offer six different roundtable discussion sessions where journalists can learn from their colleagues:

• General assignment reporting
• Courts and cops reporting
• Challenges for new editors
• Feature writing
• Political reporting
• Copy desk and design desk challenges

Here's our fall newsletter with all the details. And here's the registration form.

The conversation can begin here. If you'd like to toss out a question or topic in any of those areas, just post a comment below.

Depressing. But then ...

Here's depressing news from the Knight Foundation about students and the First Amendment:

Three years after a new federal law took effect requiring schools to educate all students about the Constitution and the First Amendment, a new survey shows that a majority of America’s students aren’t even aware that Constitution Day exists. See full story.

But, if you want to feel a little better, read this column from Monday's Northern Star. Can't say I agree with every word, but at least this is one student who "gets it" about the First Amendment.

And if you just want to feel creeped out, go to the "other" Knight Foundation page and take in "The Official David Hasselhoff Site of Worship."

Workshop aftermath

To those who attended today's NINA workshop on alternative story forms: What was the biggest idea you went home with? What's the biggest question you're left with? Any other thoughts worth discussing?

For me, it was the overall idea of segmenting: looking at how every story can be broken apart into its various elements, and then choosing the best form to present each element in print, online or both. And, it's the idea that the critical moment for all of that to happen is that initial reporter-editor conversation before any writing has taken place.

Thanks to Cory Powell of the Minneapolis Star Tribune for doing a wonderful job leading the discussion. And thanks to everyone who attended. We had a full house.

EyeTrack and story forms

In advance of this Thursday's NINA workshop: Here's an interesting piece from Poynter today about EyeTrack studies with alternative story forms. The upshot is: Story form matters. A lot.

What makes a good workshop?

At a NINA committee meeting this morning, we talked about ideas for workshops in the next year. This year's workshops have seen great interest and attendance. It's clear there's a hunger out there for relevant training, especially in new media.

A few ideas that came up today:

• Managing time between print and online journalism: What is the right balance and how can we do it all with little or no increase in resources?
• Newsroom reorganization: Are we ready to think online first, even when our advertisers are not? And what exactly does that look like in terms of workflow?
• Mobile journalism (mojo): How can we equip journalists to produce multimedia? What does their new workday look like? Do they even need to come into the newsroom every day?

We would love to hear your ideas. What training topics would be most relevant to you and/or your newsroom? What would the workshops look like? Please take a minute or two and post a comment below.

Good news for the First Amendment

Good news from the Illinois governor's office on Friday: He signed into law SB 729, the College Campus Press Act. It takes effect Jan. 1. Here is the act in its final version. Basically, it protects student newspapers at Illinois public colleges and universitities from being censored by administrators. And, it protects advisers from being disciplined or fired for protecting their students' free speech/press rights.

Huge thanks to state lawmakers who sponsored and overwhelmingly this legislation, in response to the confusing 2005 Hosty v. Carter decision. In particular, thanks to Sen. Susan Garrett, D-Lake Forest, who introduced the bill.

Workshop Sept. 13!

Here's the info on a terrific workshop coming up:

Alternative Story Forms
A Practical Approach for Print and Online

Thursday, Sept. 13, 2007
9 a.m. to noon
Room 405, Holmes Student Center, Northern Illinois University

Discussion Leader: Cory Powell, Deputy Managing Editor for Visuals, Minneapolis Star-Tribune

Cost: $20 for NINA members; $40 for nonmembers

Download a flier to post in your newsroom!

What’s an alternative story form?
It’s simply finding the best way to tell a good story quickly. Rather than quickly settling for a traditional news story and photo, it’s finding the right combination of words, pictures, graphics, photos and/or design.

During this hands-on workshop, we’ll view successful examples of various, nontraditional storytelling forms. Then, attendees will break into small groups and develop real story ideas and forms.

Who should attend?
Reporters, photographers, graphic artists, designers, editors … anyone who wants sharper skills at turning out stories that readers actually read. We’ll pay special attention to the needs and staffing limitations of small dailies and weeklies.

To register: Contact Jim Killam, jkillam@niu.edu or 815-753-4239. Attendees may pay at the door, but please register by Wednesday, Sept. 5.

About our speaker:
Cory Powell is deputy managing editor for visuals at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis. He led the Star Tribune’s award-winning 2005 redesign, which relied on extensive readership research to guide its use of alternative story forms and extensive layering to reach out to casual readers. He also has led redesigns at the Charlotte Observer and the Columbus (Ga.) Ledger-Enquirer. In nearly two decades in newspapers, he has been a designer, copy editor, copy desk chief and news editor. He passed up a career as a ski bum, a choice he second-guesses every winter. He lives in Eagan, Minn.

Please lobby the Guv

The Illinois Senate unanimously passed the College Campus Press Act recently, and it now awaits Gov. Blagojevich's signature. This is not yet a sure thing. With thanks to those of you who already asked your legislators to support this bill, we in college media have one more favor to ask: Would you also now consider contacting the governor and asking him to sign SB0729 into law? To refresh your memory, this is the bill that would effectively negate the unfortunate Hosty v. Carter decision from a couple of years ago, and guarantee that student journalists at public colleges are free of administrative censorship. More background

Here's the contact info: Office of the Governor, 207 State House, Springfield, IL 62706 Phone: 217-782-0244 or 312-814-2121.

Or, much simpler, there's an online contact form.

Thanks!

NINA contest deadline

A reminder that this Monday, June 25, is the postmark deadline for entries for this year's NINA contest. All details, including category descriptions and entry forms, at the NINA Web site.

Summer newsletter

NINA's summer newsletter is here. There are stories about:

• Recent workshops, focusing especially on our Multimedia Storytelling workshop at The Observer in Rockford;
• Winners of our annual scholarship competition for high-school seniors;
• and Olga Gize Carlile of the Journal-Standard in Freeport, named this spring by NIU as Illinois Journalist of the Year.

The print version of the newsletter will be mailed soon.

"The libel case from hell"

Today's Chicago Tribune has an editorial about the ongoing case between Justice Robert Thomas and the Kane County Chronicle, calling it "the libel case from hell." It's mostly an explanatory piece, talking about the "collision of crucial rights" the case raises.

Slide-show software

Here's a blog piece about Soundslides by journalism educator Mindy McAdams. The upshot is, there's now a Soundslides Plus, for $70, that adds a bunch of features. Both that and the $40 regular version are available here.

And here's the link for PhotoStory 3, the free Microsoft software that creates audio slide shows.

What are you going to try?

For those who attended the multimedia workshop today in Rockford: If you try something new online based on the coversation today, we'd love to hear about it. Just post a reply below.

Front-page ads

Interesting piece in the June-July issue of American Journalism Review, about front-page ads: "A Fading Taboo." Am I wrong for remaining a purist on this issue and encouraging my students to keep ads off page 1? Do readers even care?

Blogging: The Handout

Here are notes and links from my NINA workshop talk June 14 about blogging.

Interesting things a few northern Illinois newspapers are doing:

Rockford Register Star
Beep (Daily Herald)
Daily Journal, Kankakee
Northwest Herald
Sun-Times News Group (Naperville)
Journal-Standard, Freeport
Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Tribune
Northern Star


Nationally, places you may want to be looking for inspiration:

Bakersfield Californian
Mix of staff blogs and reader blogs
Great idea: Ask the Californian

Wicked Local Plymouth
(this site won the EPpy for best Web site affiliated with a weekly newspaper)
note local videos blog

Bluffton Today
Community site for Bluffton, S.C.

Houston Chronicle: great place to look for ideas
reader blogs, too

San Antonio Express-News

Washington Post

Reader blogs at The Oklahoman

Knox County, Maine


A great idea from Minnesota Public Radio:
The Future of Small Towns idea generator


Article from Online Journalism Review about developing a breaking news blog

NYU students rate the best blogging newspapers in the U.S.


Post the rules! Prominently!

Staff-blogger guidelines from the Greensboro (N.C.) News-Record

Reader comments: Daily Chronicle, DeKalb

Poynter column by Al Tompkins about Assessing Legal Risks of allowing story comments

Setting up a blog

Wordpress

Blogger


Subscribing to a blog

Google Reader

Photojournalism's pending revolution

“Ten years from now there will not be a single still photographer shooting photojournalism. No, probably five years.”

Those words come not from a techie, but from a veteran, revered photojournalist at this past weekend's NPPA summit in Tampa. Chris Carroll, student media adviser at Vanderbilt University, files this fascinating report on the Innovation in College Media blog.

It's worth sharing with your photo staffs. Some great links, too.

"10 Obvious Things"

Interesting piece here from a blog called "Invisible Inkling": "10 obvious things about the future of newspapers you need to get through your head." A sampling:

8. You ignore new delivery systems at your own peril. RSS, SMS, iPhone, e-paper, Blackberry, widgets, podcasts, vlogs, Facebook, Twitter — these aren’t the competition, these are your new carriers. Learn how to deliver your content across every new technology that comes into view on the horizon, and be there when new devices go into mass production.

June 14 workshop reminder

NINA's Multimedia Storytelling workshop is Thursday, June 14. The registration deadline is Thursday, June 7, and seats are filling up. Please contact me to reserve your spot. jkillam@niu.edu or 815-753-4239.

See full information three posts below this one.

Also: If you are scoring at home, please note a change in speakers. Mike Weiler, Managing Editor for Interactive Media for the Northwest NewsGroup, will talk about audio and video. Mike recently was named Innovator of the Year by Suburban Newspapers of America.

High school scholarship winners

NINA is pleased to announce the winners of our annual journalism scholarship contest for graduating high school seniors. Left to right: first place, Tara Grimes, Huntley High School; second place, Alex Ruppenthal, Naperville Central High School; third place, Vincent E. Dixon Jr., Gwendolyn Brooks College Preparatory Academy, Chicago. Honorable mentions went to (not pictured) Mary Kenkel, Kaneland High School; and Tara Knott, Geneva High School.

Congratulations to these outstanding future journalists.

More information soon on the NINA Web site and the print newsletter.

The Breaking News Blog

Good article from USC's Online Journalism Review about developing a breaking news blog. Excerpt:

Newspaper.com managers, take a lesson. If you do not have a breaking news blog ready to go on your website, get started on building one. Today. The blog is the ideal format to deliver information in a breaking news situation. There's no reason to continue relying on traditional newspaper narrative formats online when editors could better serve their readers with the far more online-friendly blog format.

... The readers in your community will come to see your paper's home page as the place to go for a friendly, authoritative voice that provides the very latest news about their community.

Full article

June 14 Workshop

Multimedia Storytelling

Thursday, June 14, 2007 • 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. • Rockford Catholic Diocese offices

Blogs • Photo Slideshows • Audio • Video

How do we keep from being left behind, but without wasting our time? Where should newspapers focus? What are the benefits and pitfalls of each of these forms of online news? How do we get started? What hardware and software do we need? What kind of training/knowledge do we need? What can we do on a tight budget?

Find answers and return to your newsroom armed with ideas and tips!

Instructors

• Audio and Video: Mike Weiler, Managing Editor for Interactive Media, Northwest NewsGroup
• Photo Slideshows: Denise Renckens, Executive Editor, The Daily Journal, Kankakee
• Blogs: Jim Killam, Adviser, Northern Star, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb
  

Cost: Only $20 for NINA members / attendees from NINA-member newspapers. $40 for non-members. Lunch included.

Check in anytime between 9 and 9:30; program begins at 9:30

Printable flier

To register: Contact Jim Killam, jkillam@niu.edu / 815-753-4239. Hurry! Only 40 spots available. Registration deadline: Thursday, June 7.

Directions: The Rockford Diocese offices are located at 555 Colman Center Drive, just off Interstate 90. See our Web site, www.northernstar.info/nina, for more detailed directions and maps.

NINA contest revitalized for 2007

NINA announces its annual newspaper contest, with several new and revised categories for 2007. Rules, categories, entry forms and more are available at http://www.northernstar.info/nina/. They're also being snail-mailed to member newspapers.

Contest period is May 1, 2006, to April 30, 2007. Postmark deadline for entries is Monday, June 25, 2007.

Good luck!

Ideas for Future Workshops

From the past two NINA workshops, here are ideas participants gave us for future workshop topics:

1. Minority coverage
   
2. Bring in readers and have them give feedback on writing samples. Or have regional papers conduct focus groups and assemble results to bring to workshop, along with a leader / spokesman from each paper’s pool of readers.
   
3. Copy editing and headline writing
   
4. Interviewing – helping people relax and give good quotes. Asking good questions.
   Getting the quote; how to talk to all kinds of sources; networking with community members so they approach us when they have ideas.
   
5. Taking group photos that look relaxed and not so posed
   
6. Choose stories (not just ledes) to pick apart and determine what would have made them more interesting.
   
7. New media (this one's coming June 14!)
   
8. Focus on news presentation rather than syntax. We as journalists are not going to attract new readers with clever leads. It will take some assimilation into new media and convergence for newspapers to return to a focus on success rather than survival.
   
9. How to appeal to readers without dumbing things down
   
10. A reporter who can talk about how to research and write a long-term story – even a book.
    
11. Alternative story forms (coming this fall!)
    
12. Help with pitching ideas. Confidence that my ideas are ones that should be followed through.
    
13. Getting info from town governments’ Web sites.
    
14. Writing obituaries as more than just a regular story.
    
15. Grammar
    
16. Computer resources
    
17. Ethics
    
18. Someone like Rick Kogan of the Chicago Tribune, who goes out and patrols the city for stories and always comes back with colorful ones.

Workshop thoughts?

For those who attended the NINA reporting workshop today with Dirk Johnson, what ideas will stick with you? For me, I think it's the idea that the stuff we as newspapers pay the most attention to is not always what readers care about most. It should be more about finding those stories that appeal to all of us on a basic level - stories of love, hope, loss, shame, fear, triumph.

Dirk said, "The survival of journalism depends on the strength of storytelling."

Do you think it's realistic to say we can accomplish that, as already-overworked reporters and editors? How?

20th anniversary in Woodstock

Congrats to the Woodstock Independent for celebrating its 20th anniversary today. Here's an early look at a column from publisher Cheryl Wormley that will run in this week's paper:

Twenty years ago this week, residents of Woodstock and the west side of Wonder Lake received The Woodstock Independent for the first time. The population of Woodstock at the time was about half of what it is today. Downtown businesses included, among others, two drugstores, two men’s clothing stores, several women’s clothing stores, a children’s store, a bookstore, a collector plate/candy shop and a bicycle shop. Bohn’s was on the Square; Knuth’s and A. G. Edwards were on Main Street; and Woodstock Jewelers, Ray Wolf Jewelers and Angelo’s Restaurant were right where they are today. Memorial Hospital was on South Street. Westwood School and Clay Street School had recently been reopened as a kindergarten center and an elementary school, respectively. Jim Shoemaker was mayor; Dennis Anderson was city manager; and Joe Hentges was the new superintendent of Woodstock School District 200.
The Independent’s publisher was Denise Graff Ponstein. She was in her mid-20s and recently married. I was the editor, in my early 40s and a mother of three young boys. Last week, Denise and I reminisced about The Independent’s first days and years.
In 1986, the owners of Woodstock’s newspaper, The Daily Sentinel, merged it with several other of their McHenry County newspapers to create the Northwest Herald. That left Woodstock without its own newspaper for the first time in more than 100 years. Denise and I both worked for District 200. She ran the print shop, and I was the part-time community relations coordinator. At best, it was difficult to find the news about Woodstock schools in the new regional daily.
We both remember the November day in 1986 when I walked into the print shop and for the umpteenth time said, “Someone needs to start a weekly.” Denise replied, “Why don’t we?”
Our only newspaper experiences prior to The Independent were reading them. Looking back, we both agree that our lack of experience was a benefit. We didn’t have any preconceived ideas, and we couldn’t fear what we didn’t know. Deep down inside we knew we would succeed. Failure wasn’t an option.
We were blessed with supportive families, especially our husbands, a community that wanted its own newspaper and businesses that willingly advertised in the new weekly newspaper.
We also were blessed with energetic, risk-taking staff members. Our first photographer was Bob Knauf, a Marian Central High School student. Our first reporter was Tina McCreary, a journalist with two years of experience. Our first advertising sales person was John Trione, fresh out of Eastern Illinois University. We had retirees, too. Bill and Jackie Dean retired from teaching in Woodstock schools and came to work for The Independent. Al Mansfield became our first courier and our Mr. Fixit. Lisa Kelly, always ready to try something new, answered phones and wrote stories. Denise’s mother, Rita Graff, was our first circulation manager. Bob Fyfe helped, too.
Thanks to help from family, friends and neighbors who labeled and bundled the newspapers, the first four editions were mailed to everyone with a 60098 zip code and the west half of 60097. By the end of the fourth week, we had more than 500 subscribers.
As Denise and I became better acquainted with our new profession, we realized that our decision to offer the paper free for only four weeks was gutsy. We made dozens of other gutsy decisions early on and as years went by. “We made quick decisions,” Denise reminded me. “And, most of the time we were right.”
For certain, our decision to start The Independent was a good one, and that’s another reason to celebrate. Next week, I’ll share more insights and fill you in on the 20th anniversary celebration schedule.

(Thanks to General Manager Kim Kubiak for providing this to Digital Ink.)

April 27 workshop reminder

Just a reminder to sign up for NINA's April 27 workshop with Dirk Johnson, formerly of the New York Times and Newsweek. Register by contacting me at 815-753-4239, or jkillam@niu.edu. You can pay at the door, but we need to hear from you by Friday, April 20.

Download the flier (PDF)

Go to our Web site

Rockford Register Star sold

The Rockford Register Star has been sold by Gannett to Gatehouse Media, the same company that recently bought the former Copley newspapers in Peoria, Springfield and Galesburg. Story

From reporter Nate Legue's story about Gatehouse: “They own no metros and don’t want to. And particularly, the reason why they feel that way is that small and medium-sized daily papers still can dominate the marketplace,” Register Star Publisher Fritz Jacobi said.

Putting FOIA'd documents online

Here's a new-media approach to old-school investigative reporting, from today's Northern Star. Our students FOIA'd for all expenses related to the football bowl game NIU went to in December, then did a lengthy story AND put all of the documents online for readers to peruse for themselves. They're hoping to receive further story tips from readers who see things they may have missed.

Sing it, Sam

From new Tribune owner Sam Zell:
"If you are relevant, people are going to buy a newspaper…If people buy a newspaper, circulation is going to go up. If you're not relevant, people will stop buying newspaper and stop buying advertising. "

"I really believe that you can be relevant and you can be editorially spectacular. And I think you can be irrelevant and be editorially spectacular. And the name of the game is the former and not the latter."

"I'm a great believer in the philosophy that the definition of power is never having to take a vote. In other words, if I have a view and I can't convince everybody that that's the right direction, then I have no ability to execute."

Full interview - text and video

The real heroes

Journalism blogger Tim Porter offers an interesting take today on who the real heroes of newspapers are today. Hint: They're not those who are resigning amid a sea of industry change and declaring that journalism's best days are behind us.

April 27 workshop

Another opportunity for affordable newsroom training: NINA's April 27 workshop, "Right Before Your Eyes," features former New York Times and Newsweek reporter Dirk Johnson. Dirk will help participants learn to find stories in nontraditional places, from nontraditional sources.

When: 9:30 a.m. to noon Friday, April 27
Where: Campus Life Building, NIU-DeKalb
Cost: Just $15, which includes continental breakfast.

Download a flier

New Eyetrack study

The Poynter Institute today is releasing results of its new Eyetrack study, which shows how people read newspapers and Web sites. Fascinating stuff.

See your future. BE your future, Danny

Here's an interesting piece from American Journalism Review, about how younger journalists view the industry and their future.

Extra style points on this blog for any Caddyshack reference, by the way.

For openers ...

So, this is a new blog intended for the journalism community of northern Illinois. You're invited to ...

• Share helpful advice and ideas
• Raise questions about particular beats or stories
• Talk about legal or ethical questions or concerns
• Post links to good stuff you've done or seen

The blog will be run by the Northern Illinois Newspaper Association. We'll try to post helpful writing and reporting tips here whenever possible - either ours or we'll link to useful material we've seen.

As things progress, we may branch into design, photo, editing, new media and any other areas that prove interesting and relevant to you. We'd love to hear your suggestions.