Let's Talk Widener and Chester communication

In my last chat with Widener’s director of public relations, Dan Hanson, I asked him why there is such a large disconnect between Widener and the residents of Chester.

He said, “Before the Chester Spotlight, and later the Chester Spirit, and now The C-City Blogger, we had no effective way to get the word out to Chester. The Daily Times are not set up to print all our releases.”

Since I started receiving press releases from Widener, I easily have received at least 20 times as many from them than I’ve received from the City of Chester, the school district, Chester churches, Chester social agencies, and politicians - COMBINED.

Just go to the bottom of the blog and put ‘Widener’ in the search box. The results go on for pages. Do the same for any of the other organizations and you won’t find many press releases.

Yet, people call me a Widener supporter because I post many, not all, of their press releases.

How crazy is that?

I received complaints from folks who tell me I refuse to post their submission. When I send them a link to their post, they apologize and say that they missed it.

Sometimes you have to seek information. It doesn’t always fall into your lap. With a free subscription to this blog, the new post fall into your email inbox. No excuse for missing a thing.

The communication issue in this city is two fold. One, we don’t communicate well. Two, Chester people depend on the Daily Times as the voice of Chester.

I know for a fact that the Daily Times has a great interest in Chester, and even assign Chester it’s own reporter. But it’s a county paper with very limit resources. There’s no way they can cover everything in the county with as few pages as they print, and still make room for classifieds, Philly sports, comics, movies, obits, regional and world news - oh, and news from the other hundred towns in the county.

If there was more input and support for the dedicated Chester sources of information, we could easily stand alone with news particular to Chester. 

I am very encouraged to read that the Chester High students are looking to take over their Comcast channel. Both the school district and the city of Chester have grossly underutilized that medium up to now.