Some weeks back we asked our readers, as we do every year, to take a short survey. In addition to some basic demographic information (which we will keep confidential), readers were asked how they get their news, what kind of information they’re looking for from the Blue Mountain Eagle, what we’re doing well and where we could improve.

Some 88 of you responded, and we want to thank your for taking the time to do so. This information is invaluable to us, and we particularly appreciate your honest and thoughtful responses to our open-ended questions about how we can do a better job. While answers like “Keep on doing what you’re doing” make us feel good (and we got a hearteningly large number of those), there is always room for improvement, and you gave us a number of good suggestions.

Although we received a wide variety of comments about things we could do better, several broad themes emerged. Based on your feedback, we’ve identified five clear goals for improving our coverage:

• Community coverage: There’s much more to Grant County than what happens in John Day, but that’s where we focus an inordinate amount of our attention. We need to do a better job of covering what goes on in Canyon City, Prairie City, Mt. Vernon, Long Creek, Dayville, Monument, Seneca, Kimberly, Granite and all the other places where Grant County residents live, work and play. This is our No. 1 goal for improvement, and we’ve already started to take steps to that end, including carving out space on our website for grouping stories by community. As we begin to roll out more stories about some of Grant County’s smaller communities, we’ll also try to do a better job of labeling them in the paper.

• Human interest stories: There’s a lot of hard news happening in Grant County, but sometimes we focus on those stories to the exclusion of the softer side of life. Many of you called on us to do more “good news” stories about local residents, especially the kind of everyday people who don’t ordinarily show up in the newspaper. Look for more of those stories in our pages as well — and if you’ve got a suggestion for someone who would make a good profile, please send it our way.

• Schools coverage: Even before the survey, we were already starting to do more news, feature and “issue” stories about our local schools, but this is an area where we will continue trying to improve. We also hope doing these stories will open doors to others in smaller communities such as Seneca, Dayville and Monument.

• Business coverage: Our goal here is twofold: Not only do we want to do more stories on new businesses around Grant County, but we also want to find ways to incorporate established local businesses into our coverage. As one survey respondent put it, local businesses “keep our lights on here in Grant County.”

• Events coverage: There’s a lot going on here in Grant County, and many of you told us you want to be able to read about those events in the Blue Mountain Eagle. We do our best to get that information out there, but we can certainly do better. Please, if you have an event you want people to know about, send us the information so we can publicize it in the paper. You can email the details to editor@bmeagle.com, and please remember to get it to us by Friday (or sooner) for publication the following Wednesday.

Thanks again for all your suggestions. We’ll do our best to put them into practice.

Stories we’re working on for this week’s paper include an update on the Tyler Smith case, recent decisions by the John Day Planning Commission, how Blue Mountain Hospital is coping with pandemic-related budget challenges and a changing of the guard at an old line John Day business. And don’t miss Journey, our annual travel section, with stories on some of Grant County’s most inviting destinations.

In case you missed it, last week’s edition featured stories on the newly reopened Prairie Wood Products sawmill, plans to bring a CyberMill to Prairie City, a possible law enforcement levy and a public archaeological dig at Kam Wah Chung.

As always, I want to take this opportunity to thank our subscribers for their support. We can’t do this work without you!