June 30, 2017, Great Lakes Commission
Phrag Phriday is a weekly newsletter that has been bringing Phrag updates to subscribers since December 2015. We know that this newsletter can be a helpful resource for the Phrag community. To determine what’s most helpful and what can be improved, we conducted a survey of our subscribers.
The results are in! Click through the segments below to see the results and how we will address the feedback.
How frequently should the newsletter be sent out?
What content should be included?
Additional comments and suggestions on content
- Summaries of new research, sometimes the links cannot be accessed
- The “Phake News” is a personal favorite (and a fun way to end the week!) but would be great to cross post to social media consistently for CISMAs/partners to share on their FB pages etc.
- I’m interested in effective alternatives to glyphosate for moderate scale (up to several acres) Phragmites control, given the increasing scientific evidence on human and animal cancer risk associated with glyphosate. Our ability to continue Phragmites control hinges on this issue. Thanks!
- Address social issues such as how to keep communities engaged in Phragmites fight.
- I like the format as is! Concise, useful, and fun.
- I’ve enjoyed the reader submitted pictures of phrag that has been found in the media, such as in the Windows background!
- Great work! Thank you!
- It would be helpful if articles would state upfront where they are working; country, state, county; so I don’t need to do an online search to see where the work/research, etc., is being done.
- The news article headlines are often very militaristic (war, fight, battle) and anthropomorphic (wicked weed). This is an unhelpful way to frame invasive species issues and erodes scientific credibility. Please considering reading Larson 2005 The War of the Roses: Demilitarizing Invasion Biology at http://escholarship.org/uc/item/8366c0wq A second piece of feedback: the journal articles cited are often of little relevance to land managers. Who is your core audience and can you focus papers on them?
- Articles on phrag in the news should clearly state at the top of the article (before clicking on the link) the location/source of the news story, such as Toronto, Canada or Washtenaw County, Ann Arbor, MI, and possibly given a tag such as Management, Monitoring, Volunteer Effort or Research
- I really enjoy the publication. However, during busy field season, I don’t always get a chance to do more than a quick glance. Love the Phake News, the first thing I look for. Keep up the great work!
- Because of your occasional phake phrag news, it is sometimes hard to believe real stories, like the woman that got lost in phrag for 24 hours and got hypothermic! I had to check to be sure it wasn’t phake!
- don’t want to send the info out too much they get mad
- Thanks for sticking with it!
How will we address this feedback?
Frequency
Votes for a weekly and bi-weekly newsletter were almost tied. We will continue to focus on news (and fake news!) in a weekly newsletter and will add a monthly newsletter with different content (see below)
Content
- There’s lots of interest in receiving information on academic research as well as new resources for managers. In response, we will launch a Resource Roundup that goes out monthly and will include links to journal articles and new documents that may be helpful to managers. A few people asked for access to read the full journal articles – since almost all journals require a subscription, this is not something we can do. However, we’ll do a better job of separating out resources for folks in academia (who already have journal subscriptions) from free resources focused more specifically on management.
- We will add the city and state to news articles
That’s it! Please contact us at any time to share additional feedback on the newsletter.