About 'Plainfield Today'

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ABOUT 'PLAINFIELD TODAY'

As of New Year's Day, I no longer have public relations responsibilities for the City of Plainfield.

'Plainfield Today' was begun as my personal blog, but with a very particular focus. For eight years, I have dutifully ground out press releases on City policies and activities -- from the momentous to the ephemeral. One of the constant frustrations of any public information practitioner is how little of the material laboriously prepared ever sees the light of day: the media, of course, have their own ideas of what is important, and how important anything that goes on in Plainfield is. So you live with it and try not to whine.

But straws have been known to break camel's backs. And one straw finally broke mine: the refusal by one of the major media outlets to consider the City's online auction of anticipatory notes this past Fall as newsworthy. Pleading made no difference.

So I did what millions of other resourceful American have done, I started a blog: 'Plainfield Today.' And the very first posting was about the online auction [ "Plainfield offers $11.7M in notes online, a first" ].

'Plainfield Today' is my personal blog, no taxpayer money has been spent on setting it up or maintaining it. That being said, to date I have used it solely as a method of putting out the City's press releases on as frequent a basis as possible. This is for two reasons. First, it means that if citizens are interested, there is a place to look regularly, on the odd chance that the media will not pick up on City activities. Secondly, the blog's instantaneousness overcomes the lag -- sometimes two weeks or more -- in getting material posted to the City's official website.

Effective New Year's Day, postings to 'Plainfield Today' will no longer be press releases of the City of Plainfield. Going forward, press releases from the City will emanate from the office of Mayor Sharon Robinson-Briggs.

This means that 'Plainfield Today' will now be able to expand its view to include not only news items about City activities and/or policies, but opinion pieces and a category of 'sightings and gossip' [ think the New York Post's 'Page Six' ]. All, of course, in my signature modest style.

And a 'Happy New Year' to all!

-- Dan Damon

Keywords: Press releases