We often get asked why we chose a particular news story or a particular topic for an article, or about what our process is. It’s always a challenging question to answer. Not because there’s not an answer, but because there’s so much involved.
When it comes to news stories, that’s actually pretty easy. We post all that come through our feed relating to transit. We pay for copyright usage from several sources that have news from around the world and while our focus is North America, we’ll post prominent stories from other countries that relate to transit safety, security, funding or technology.
With stories we write it’s not quite so simple. I’m all about data and have a ridiculous amount of spreadsheets so I know how many bus or rail stories there are; or how many large agencies or small agencies; how many from the Midwest or Northwest; and how many from each state or province. And then there’s looking at the topics from the various departments, whether maintenance, legislation, planning, operations, security, training, marketing and the list goes on. It’s a large industry that has a lot going on so we need to be just as diverse.
We track suggestions we get, whether it’s for topic ideas or bigger changes our readers would like to see on our website or in our magazine and we also send out a reader survey periodically to get feedback from a larger audience.
When I started on Mass Transit there wasn’t much of a website and the focus was the print issue. Changes, if any, were once a year with the start of the year. As the digital side of things became more prominent in our day-to-day coverage, just like everywhere else, we adapted to the different pace; part of that whole evolution of today’s 24/7 electronic pace. And that has changed how we look at our print, as well. If there’s a change to implement, now we just move forward and do it instead of waiting for an arbitrary day on a calendar.
For this cover story we took a regional look at an area for a number of reasons: people don’t travel within just one community; with long-term funding being such a critical issue to aging infrastructure, everyone is looking at new and creative ways of financing; and transit is having a dramatic impact on how areas develop.
What DART President/Executive Director Gary Thomas said about his organization relates to any, “…like any other business, you can’t sit here and be happy with where you are. That’s nice for the moment. We’ve got to be constantly looking ahead, constantly searching for how do we make this better.”
“There is nothing permanent except change.” - Heraclitus
