Dear Red Bank,
We made it to Memorial Day Weekend. Of course, we’re repping that in our masthead at the top of this page (and below, in case you missed it).
You may have noticed that we like to have fun at redbankgreen.
If you’re going to do something for 100 years, you’d better have fun doing it or it’s going to get old fast.
So here’s a quick summary of things that we’ve been having fun doing:
- Winning awards: redbankgreen just won the Local Media Association’s (LMA) Best News Product award. Our parent company, Broadstreet, which spun out of redbankgreen, just won LMA’s Best R&D Partner award. These are pretty serious in our industry.
- Posting partylines: Have you noticed our Partyline feature? They’re short form articles and stories. Anybody can send ideas in for submission. It just won second place for “best news product” at LMA. Apply to be a redbankgreen Partyliner here.
- Launching a podcast, shooting videos, posting Instas and TikToks, bringing on new advertising partners, and getting to the bottom of whatever goes on in The Wilde Rover – not in any effort to keep up with the Joneses, but because it’s who we are.
I want to be clear that we’re doing something special at redbankgreen. You and us. We’re redefining what local news is.
We’re also inspiring. The publisher of the largest local newsroom in Texas announced his own 100 year vision — he dropped us a note to let us know that he was inspired by ours.
That’s the kind of optimism this industry needs.
It’s easy to miss when it’s right under our noses. But recognize that what you see and read at redbankgreen is unlike anything that any town on the planet has. You, me, Brian, and John Ward … and one last very important group of people: our businesses and organizations that support us.
I’d like to take a minute to recognize the partners and advertisers that make redbankgreen possible today: Antique Center, Monmouth Meats, YMCA, Steve at Red Bank Frameworks, Stew at Monmouth Meats, RiverCenter, Chris Havens, Kyle Reed, Shannon Parks and Adam at Triumph Brewing.
They make it possible. Yes, they support what we’re building here in Red Bank, but we support them too — by treating them as the partners that they are in building the community that we have.
So, you’re here for the t-shirts right? Limited edition, very high quality running shirts. Perfect for the Red Bank 5k. We’ve got 5 to give away — and the instructions are very simple:
- Leave a comment below, on what you love about Red Bank.
- Find an advertiser on our page who has a “love,” “like,” or “lightbulb” icon and give it a click, or several. See what happens.
- Email [email protected] and say hi. We’ll pick 5 people who do this before the end of the weekend. If there are more than 5, we’ll put you on a list to get you one when a new batch comes in.
A final note on comments: there are new comment guidelines posted beneath our comment policy. The comments are one of the things that many of us secretly look forward to reading. But we must keep the comments civil and (mostly) intelligent.
The new policy is almost a verbatim copy of a policy of a message board called HackerNews, which I’ve personally been a member of for a long time. I think their policy has served them well.
That said, no comment policy is ever perfect. There are tradeoffs between commenting systems, levels of anonymity, types of speech tolerated, and much, much more.
One day, we’ll arrive at the holy grail of commenting systems and policies where there are no problems. If anyone has a fighting chance, well, we’re at least in the running.
That is all. Enjoy your Memorial Day Weekend.
And long live local news.
