Dear Parents… FMS Requests Your Comments!
Hello FMS Parents and Families! I hope everyone is enjoying autumn and looking forward to Thanksgiving and the holiday season. Perhaps you’ve managed to stay clear of the flu thus far. Not an easy feat these days! I swear that if I can make it to the end of the semester without getting sick it will be a miracle. Here’s to hoping though, right?
I wanted to address two topics relevant to your engagement in all aspects of the Fishburne experience. Firstly, if you are reading this post it means you’ve found our blog. I hope you’re reading it often because I try to place content on The Fishburne Times-Connect several times a week. Since we started the blog in July we’ve steadily increased traffic to the site, and now we’re getting almost 300 visits per day, and have had over 10,000 visits over the last four months!
With that in mind, I would really like your help in producing content for everyone to enjoy and well as your participation in the “Parents’ Forum.” Make sure to leave comments! In speaking for everyone at FMS, please know that we are very interested in your stories. How did you come to the decision to send your son to Fishburne? What was it about Fishburne that you found most attractive? How has your son changed since you dropped him off here in Waynesboro?
Please understand that I’m not looking for a novel. Any amount of writing is much appreciated. If you’d like to write more that’s great. All of us here at FMS know that this is a highly emotional decision. For many of you Fishburne was your first choice. For others, FMS was your best option under the circumstances. We understand the difference and hope you’ll share with everyone how you made that distinction and the big decision that followed.
Please submit your comments directly to the blog or email me your thoughts at (rcatherwood@fishburne.org).
Also, with regards to photo requests…
I’ve had several people ask about Shutterfly and whether you can purchase photos. Rather than upload tons of photos onto another server, I’ve been taking the best photos and placing them on the blog. If you see an image you like, let me know and I’ll send it to you for free. If you click on the image it should give you an image number for reference purposes.
Thanks!
Ryan
How do I put this? I can’t think of any way but straight out. It seems to me that the amount of publicity the PG basketball team gets is way out of proportion to all of the other teams at FMS. How many PG students are there? Ten? What about the rest of the high school teams? What about cross country? Raiders? Soccer team? Rifle team? For all I could tell they don’t exist. The Caissons have a shot at a championship for the first time in recent memory and all that gets is a “by the way, they are hosting Hyde Leadership next week.”
In the past, none of the teams got much coverage so I guess I really didn’t notice before. However, this year all I hear about is the PG program. I appreciate the efforts to give the school more publicity. I do think that with limited resources you need to make more of an effort to look at ALL the team events and ensure that they get equal coverage.
Sorry, but you asked.
November 7, 2009 at 9:17 pm
Mr. Innella:
Thank you for taking the time to write. I appreciate that very much. The PG Team gets a lot of coverage because topics surrounding the team get the most interest and viewings on this blog. I can tell by viewing what people searched for on Google, and the corresponding articles they read, that interest in the PG Team far exceeds any other topic by far, sports related or not. My job as Communications Director is to place the content people are looking for on our blog or Web site. So with that in mind, I absolutely disagree with your premise that “with limited resources you (I) need to make more of an effort to look at ALL the team events equally.”
This same premise applies to the way ESPN covers various sports and individual teams. ESPN covers the NY Yankees ten times more than the Kansas City Royals because people want to know about the Yankees. If more people told ESPN that they want to know about the Royals then they would change their approach because it’s about ratings. Coverage of the NFL far outweighs that of the NHL. Right now, people are clamoring for information about the PG Team because of their high talent level and newness to the school. With a very limited advertising budget, the school desperately needs press coverage. The football team (which gets lots of attention on this blog) and the PG team have been deemed more newsworthy by the local press.
Much of this also has to do with the information supplied to me by the coaches about their teams. Some coaches are more active than others about supplying information about their team and performances.
Hopefully, lots of people will respond to this topic and write comments. This is an important discussion. If alumni, parents, and friends of the school would like to see increased information about other teams then it shall be done. However, I would say the data does not support the general sentiment that you have expressed.
Again, I very much appreciate your feedback. I’ve updated the Web site’s ‘Commandant’ section to reflect your request to have Awards and Orders posted regularly.
Thanks,
Ryan
November 8, 2009 at 4:46 pm