Published: September 28, 2008 02:34 pm            

MARREN: You child’s face could make art

Newspapers, like many businesses, are diversifying their offerings these days. There’s a lot more on the Internet, delivery of news through text messaging and even magazines as supplements to the daily print product.

It’s a sign of the times, since the customer is always looking for more and more.

So enter the US&J and a glossy magazine we’ll be launching in November. The scheduled release date is Nov. 22.

The magazine’s focus will be an extension of the stories we cover in the daily. Stories and photos about the great people and places will be the concentration for this inaugural edition we’re calling ’Faces & Places.’ Issues will come out every quarter.

Readers and our Reader Advisory Board have been great in helping with new projects like this. Whether it’s our annual Pride edition in April, where we look for Unsung Heroes, or our Baby Calendar, which will also start up again this week. We’ll need your help with Faces & Places magazine as well. Most notably, we’ll need a hand with our calendar of events that will be featured inside, and the front cover, which I’ll explain below.

I think we’re doing good for magazine-style story ideas, which our diligent reporters are working on as I write this, but feel free to send your story ideas any time. Not just for the magazine.

As I’m sure you’ve seen in other monthly or quarterly magazines, calendars are a big part of the final product. It’s a popular section, but it takes submissions from readers to make it as complete as possible.

Please take this time to send me details on your event if it’s being held between Nov. 23 and the end of February. Please limit your event notice to 50 words or less. Time, date, place, maybe contact information and a brief blurb is all I’ll have room for. Please make your submission by Oct. 12.

Don’t forget to send notices to Anne Calos, features editor, as well, if you’d like it in the daily paper. Sending just to her or just to me for either does not guarantee publication in both the daily and magazine. We both need to be notified.

The second part of this first magazine that we’ll need your help on is the cover. The concept is figured out, we just need help from your children. Yes, your children.

Since the name is Faces & Places, we knew we would want to incorporate as many local faces as possible. That’s what people want to see most. Pictures are popular. Pictures of locals are uber-popular.

I knew of a artist out of Buffalo who takes self-portrait drawings from willing participants in the community and arranges them to create images of local icons like Buffalo City Hall, the Darwin Martin House or the famous standing buffalo. His name is Brian Nesline and his company is Faces of Buffalo.

I approached him about working with us on our cover, with the goal being to collect self portraits of area kids and arrange them to create The Historic Palace Theatre. Brian loved it. We’re going full force now trying to collect as many self-portraits as we can by our Oct. 12 deadline.

Again, we need as many area kids to participate as we can. We need close to 3,000. So that’s an average of maybe 150 classrooms from the six to seven school districts we cover.

The people I have contacted to help out have loved the idea. The Palace staff and board is obviously ecstatic. Now I’m opening it up to all so we can get as many participants as possible.

There is a self-portrait form for this project that can be picked up at our front desk, 170 East Ave., or downloaded from my blog. The address is below. Or I can e-mail the form to you. Whatever it takes.

Then once Brian creates the cover, it will not only feature all of these kids and their work for the magazine, but his prints will be available locally and on his Web site, www.facesofbuffalo.com/lockport.htm, with a portion of the proceeds going to the Palace Theatre.

The magazine will be quite the undertaking, but your help with at least two aspects of it should make it quite the keepsake. We’ve gotten a lot of good feedback about special sections like Pride and the Bicentennial Magazine, now we just need that same enthusiasm, quality of work and help from the readers for Faces and Places.

Managing Editor Tim Marren’s column appears every Sunday. He blogs daily at www.lockportslugline.wordpress.com He can be reached at 439-9222, ext. 6238, or marrent@gnnewspaper.com.

        

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