A long time ago, I shopped at a boutique called Stuff to Wear because it had the greatest, coolest clothes. If you wanted a special outfit, that’s where you headed.
The only thing was, I hated to shop there.
If the fluorescent lights and mirrors in dressing rooms are instruments of torture, designed to highlight every flaw and fold your body ever thought of, Stuff to Wear had something worse: Dressing rooms with no mirrors.
To see how you looked in what you were trying on, you had to leave the privacy of those alcoves and walk to an area that had lots of mirrors. And it had lots of salespeople who acted like a souped-up Greek chorus, oohing and ahhing and hovering over you with preternatural, not to mention absolutely phony, support.
You knew your be-hind looked broad as a barn door in those pants or that skirt. But they’d crow, “So slimming, honey. Oh, what the young can wear.”
You knew the lavender hue of the prospective homecoming dress brought out the chartreuse in your skin tones.
But they’d exclaim, “What that does for your eyes, sweetie!”
Sometimes I escaped Stuff to Wear with a genuinely terrific outfit. Other times, I bolted with pricey disasters whose hideousness has been preserved in unnerving yearbook photos.
The moral of the story: When you want the truth, it’s better to have fluorescent lights and mirrors than a fawning chorus.
Which is a long way of introducing you to the great group of folks we have selected for our newsroom Reader Advisory Board for the first part of this year.
To borrow from my Stuff to Wear life lesson, they are our fluorescent lights and mirrors.
If you recall, last December we asked people who wouldn’t be shy about speaking their minds to write to us about serving on our reader board. We weren’t disappointed. We received dozens and dozens of great responses, but had to cull the list to 12. A difficult undertaking, but we are pleased with the results, which reflect the great diversity of The Courier-Journal’s readership area.
We have younger and older, men and women, conservatives and liberals and some in-between, we have natives or near-natives and newcomers, people of color, people of different faiths, people who care about contributing. Like I said, we’re pleased with the group we’ve assembled:
- Liz Barrow, an engineer who was born in Puerto Rico; she and her husband (and their 13-year-old son) live on a 50-acre farm in Trimble County where they grow cigar tobacco.
- John Blevins of Louisville, a veteran and retired civil servant who doesn’t think the newspaper represents him or reflects his interests.
- Mil Buckley of Crestwood, a data processing consultant with degrees in physics and world trade who also is an avid traveler.
- Deb Bulleit of Harrison County, Ind., who works in institutional research at Indiana University Southeast and is an adjunct faculty member in computer science.
- Stephanie Ellis of Louisville, a high school junior who is interested in the arts and in traveling.
- Claudia Geurin, a retired BellSouth manager who now works as a cleark for the Jefferson County Public Schools; she also is a board member of the Louisville Urban League.
- Greg Huffman of Louisville, a purchasing agent who describes himself as “an avid reader, an aspiring writer . . . a news junkie.”
- Kenny Karem of Louisville, a middle school teacher of social studies and language arts, a globe-trotting traveler, and author of books about local history.
- Donna Walker Mancini, a businesswoman and chairman of the Libertarian Party of Kentucky and of Jefferson County.
- Harve Rawson of Madison, Ind., an author and inveterate traveler (he has visited 140 countries) who also has been a research scientist, college professor and psychotherapist.
- Brian Snee of Louisville, an assistant professor of communications at Bellarmine University; a new father, he and his wife moved to Louisville last summer.
- Dr. Yacoub E. Yacoub, a retired anesthesiologist who practiced at Jewish Hospital for 25 years; he was instrumental in starting the Kentucky chapter of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in March 2001.
No fawning chorus, this group.
Members will meet every month or so with Courier-Journal staff members and editors to discuss what’s in the newspaper and what they think about it.
To get the board started, and to tailor our future discussions, I gave them a questionnaire to complete. I’ll repeat the broader questions here (two other questions dealt with the group’s in-house sessions), and if you are moved to answer any or all of the questions and send your answers to me, I’d love to read them and share them with others at the newspaper:
- In your opinion, what are the three most pressing concerns of your community? Of this region? Please explain why.
- What type of coverage would you like to see The Courier-Journal do to address those concerns?
- What is your opinion of The Courier-Journal now? In addition to that answer, please list what you think are the newspaper’s three greatest strengths and three greatest weaknesses, and explain why.
- Which section of the newspaper do you always read? What do you like about it? What would you add to it?
- Which section of the newspaper do you rarely or never read? Why don’t you read it? What would you change about it to make it more useful or interesting?
- In what way is the newspaper more useful to you than the news you receive from other news media? Why?
- What is your overall opinion of the news media? What contributed to that opinion? What would change it?
You can be lights and mirror, too. Let me hear from you.
