Good afternoon! I’ve got a few positive comments to make to the PulseLine and then one negative one. First of all, I think it’s wonderful what Patrick Berry is doing since he took over The Westfield News. I think its outstanding and I love reading it every day. Also, I’d like to say a few positive comments about Mayor Knapik. I’ve never seen such a hardworking mayor and totally accessible to the people as this man. I think he deserves and will get a third term if he chooses to run. Now, my negative comment. What a sad state of affairs when less than a dozen people show up at Munger Hill and two people at Paper Mill School to hear the state of the city address. What is wrong with you people up there? What an absolute shame! I am in my seventies and was up for three days and three nights yet I made it to hear our venerable mayor at the senior center when he spoke there. I think people should take a good look at themselves and see what kind of attention they’re paying to our elected officials and what kind of time they’re taking to show their interest. Thank you.
Today is Thursday morning. I see that they’re replacing all lights in the park downtown. If they were going to replace them they should have replaced them with single lamps, not putting five on each pole again. It’s going to be too bright, and even if it’s not too bright, and they did different bulbs, the problem is it looks overpowering. That park is too small for all those posts with five lights each. It looks stupid. Why didn’t someone figure it out and do it the right way?
Hello PulseLine! I like The Westfield News. I’ve been buying it for years. Although over the past year or so, I’m a little bit disappointed there’s not as much local news in our hometown paper. There seems to be more and more sports and more and more advertising meaning that the pictures are getting larger and so is the print. I realize advertising pays the paper what it needs to operate and I like the sports. But it seems like when you take a half page of sports and cover the whole page with it, I gotta believe there’s more news locally than what you’re printing. It’s a thought. During the sport seasons we devote two whole pages to local athletes, their teams and their games and one page to standings and scores. Historically, the paper would cover only one local event per day and now we get to as many as we possibly can. Students and their family members appreciate seeing their picture and name in the paper so we provide as much of that as we can. As for local news, we only have three reporters (excluding sports) and they do approximately two stories per day. This is up from a couple years ago when they were doing one per day and relying heavily on the Associated Press wire service for content. It’s a balancing act to get as much local content as possible and manage expenses. We are always looking for volunteer contributors so if you’d like to submit content please let us know.
