Moms Rule

Monday night we held our first meeting—and I’m pleased to report we’re off to a productive start.

This is probably because we have some of the brightest, most professional and caring moms in San Juan Capistrano on board. Drum roll, please! The moms include (in no particular order): Penny Arévalo, our own education reporter; Emily Smith, an attorney who this week will begin airing podcasts on our site along with Kristie Houk Cain, a teacher; Melissa Hodge, a well-connected community volunteer who also writes a weekly column for us titled In the Divide; Jennifer Pointer, operations manager for the San Juan Capistrano Chamber of Commerce and Sheryl France-Moran, a past PTA president.

Although they will be the go-to people for me in learning what moms want from San Juan Capistrano Patch, I continue to hope our readers raising children will feel open to sharing their ideas with us, too. If you’ve seen my picture at the top of the Home page, you’ve probably assumed I’m young enough not to have kids. You’re right. That’s why your input, and theirs, is invaluable to me.

Our first goal Monday was to nail down the first few questions to ask moms, and dads, for a new, weekly Q&A piece called Moms Talk (a sneak peek: our first one has to do with preschools). Our second goal was to determine what days and times we should publish our regular content, which as of now, also includes:

• Frugal Family: We will feature five great deals for local products, services, tickets, meals and whatever else reaps savings for families.
• Grab and Go Kids Planner: We know that planners make life easier, so we will list five great places to take the kids throughout the week.
• The Great Escape: Moms spend most of their day thinking about someone or something else other than herself. This will be about giving moms something to do/buy/go to for herself. 

I want to assure you that although this content is for you, moms, it does not mean our other content will diminish or be less relevant to you. It simply means that, for example, at noon Wednesdays you know you can come to Patch to read the latest question a mom has posed to other moms. While the news coverage has, and will not, dwindle, the addition of more content for moms has meant some changes to our other regular programming that I feel obliged to point out.

Our report now runs Tuesdays, rather than Wednesdays. The new publish date will give readers more time to plan out their grocery list for San Juan's downtown farmers market, simultaneously affording us more “room” to publish some moms content on Wednesday. I also made the difficult to decision to fade out the motorcycle column, which we had been running each Friday. I had intended that this column would grab the attention of all of the motorcyclists who make their way into San Juan Capistrano off Ortega Highway (a lofty goal!), but as I’ve come to know our readers a bit better in the past two months, I’ve realized that there’s other content more relevant to them.

It's a goal of mine in the coming weeks to establish a reader advisory council that will take on a more general role of helping shape our content across all of our "pages" and give constant feedback about the stories we publish.

If you're a mom with some ideas about how we can better focus our content to meet your needs, or if you're a reader with a news tip or other story ideas, please email me at jenna.chandler@patch.com.