Last week was the first meeting of The Marysville Globes Reader Advisory Board which was attended by some extremely enthusiastic people who offered some very good opinions as to what they would like to see in their community newspaper. Were looking forward to the same response at the first meeting of The Arlington Times RAB, scheduled for Feb. 22, beginning at 4 p.m.
Those who attended The Globes RAB have diverse backgrounds and varied interests, but all agreed that the local newspaper is a community asset and were willing to give their time and share their ideas to ensure it continues to meet the needs of the community.
One of the issues discussed at the meeting was finding ways of getting more youths involved in the newspaper and in finding ways of getting the newspaper involved with more youths. A few of the suggestions included a recurring youth essay contest, a teen advice column written by a local teen for local teens, job shadows or apprenticeships at the paper, having students write letters to the editor, more stories on the wonderful teachers and great students in the local school district, and more.
Another point of discussion centered around doing more stories on the history of Marysville the people, businesses and landmarks that made our community what it is today.
Another suggestion was for the newspaper to do more stories on the people in our community. Everyone has a story and we should be telling more of them. One idea was to do a citizen of the week feature focusing on someone in our community with an interesting story to tell. The same is true about the businesses (and the people they employ) in our community. Our community is filled with a wide variety of businesses staffed by diverse people doing jobs ranging from the exciting to the mundane, any of which could be an interesting story.
These are just some of the ideas discussed at the first meeting and we look forward to working with the members of the RAB over the coming months as we all strive to continuously improve this community asset.
The first meeting of The Arlington Times Reader Advisory Board is Feb. 22, beginning at 4 p.m., at the office of The Arlington Times. If you would like to attend, please call new editor Sarah Arney at 360-435-5757 or email saraha@arlingtontimes.com.
The next meeting of The Marysville Globes Reader Advisory Board is scheduled for March 15, beginning at 4 p.m., at office of the Marysville Globe. If you would like to attend, call managing editor Scott Frank at 360-659-1300 or email at scottyf@marysvilleglobe.com.
Your opinions are important to us and we hope to see you there and look forward to working with you to ensure that your community newspapers are the best they can be.

To contact a member of The Marysville Globe/Arlington Times editorial board Kris Passey or Scott Frank e-mail forum@premier1.net.