EDITOR’S NOTE: Salem Reporter adds monthly events listing
At Salem Reporter, we are expanding our events coverage. We want your help to do it well.
Starting this month, we’re rolling out a new strategy, which we’ll continue refining based on feedback and suggestions from our readers and event organizers around Salem.
We will publish:
- On the last Friday of each month, a new monthly guide to live entertainment and community events in Salem for the upcoming month.
- Every Wednesday at 4 p.m., a roundup of events for the week ahead, which draws from the monthly listing and includes smaller and recently-announced events.
- A monthly listing of art and cultural exhibits at local museums and historical centers.
We’re also working with our web team to find ways to better keep these items visible on our website so they don’t get buried in the churn of daily news.
As we’re refining these services, we want to share this all with as many people as we can to get feedback. To do so, we’re keeping them outside of our paywall for now and free for anyone to read.
Let me explain how we got here.
As a community news organization one of our main aims is to provide information that’s useful.
A question we see and hear frequently on social media and in our conversations around town: What’s happening in Salem? What is there to do here? What’s going on this weekend?
In our recent reader survey, we heard over and over from people that they wanted more information about local events.
And many weren’t aware of what we were already doing, which suggested we’ve done an ineffective job promoting our efforts or hitting the mark of providing useful information.
For months, we’ve published a roundup of upcoming events – usually focused on the weekend, and recently expanding to a weekly listing.
We’ve heard from readers that they want earlier notice about what’s coming up.
We’ve previously had an events calendar, but we’ve found that curating a good selection of events requires some oversight and care from our team.
How can you help?
Review our June event guide here and tell us what you think. Does it have the information you need to decide what you want to go to? Are there types of events missing? Is it easy to find what you’re looking for?
If you’re a venue or event producer who puts on shows or other happenings in Salem, we’d love to hear from you too. Let us know how we can best stay up to date on what you’re doing.
We’ve also made a new page on our website explaining how to directly submit an event or request coverage.
I’m open to your feedback and suggestions: [email protected].
Contact reporter Rachel Alexander: [email protected] or 503-575-1241.
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Rachel Alexander is Salem Reporter’s managing editor. She joined Salem Reporter when it was founded in 2018 and covers education, economic development and a little bit of everything else. She’s been a journalist in Oregon and Washington for a decade and is a past president of Oregon's Society of Professional Journalists chapter. Outside of work, you can often find her gardening or with her nose buried in a book.
