The technology that supports HCN’s work is a bit of a hodgepodge, to put it mildly. Our website, the software we use to manage subscriptions, process payments and send emails: It’s all aging systems stitched together over decades and starting to come apart at the seams.
And we know the issues that causes for readers. We read your frustrated emails and try to work through the problems — which we sometimes find equally bizarre and confusing! — with you on the phone. We rush from emergency patches to makeshift repairs, trying to keep this little raft afloat.
The good news is that this will soon change. For the better part of a year now, the High Country News Product and Marketing team has been laying the groundwork for major changes to our digital infrastructure.
As we go about the rebuilding process, we’d like to know about your experience with our current systems. What issues would you like to see addressed with the website or the way we manage your subscription, and what features would you like us to add?
That is the topic of our latest online reader survey, part of our efforts to seek more feedback from you. You can find the survey by visiting hcn.org/reader-survey or scanning the QR code to the right with your smartphone.
We welcome your thoughts even if you don’t care two bytes about the website! The survey also has the usual questions about our most recent issues. Let us know which stories you’ve appreciated, which ones you didn’t, and what you’d like to get out of your online experience with HCN.
You wasted no time finding our poem
HCN’s editors and writers had a little impromptu fun recently while reflecting on some of their favorite lines from the March issue of the magazine. They went around the virtual room, pulling fragments from different stories, and pieced together a “found poem.”
The entire staff was delighted with the results, and we had just enough time to slip the poem into the email announcing the latest issue — with a challenge. The first folks who got back to us with the page number for each line took home some HCN-branded swag.
We got a kick out of all your responses. What’d you think of the poem? Should we do it again? What’s your found poem for this issue? Let us know at dearfriends@hcn.org. And if you aren’t getting emails from HCN, visit hcn.org/activate to claim your digital access and sign up for emails.
The HCN staff’s found poem from March
More than anything, I wanted to watch back
foxes gnawing at ribs and coyotes defecating in snow
gold in the hills, but not for us
as if the hem of her dress had been dragging around in
the dirt of some earthly, non-celestial place
a place where the Northern Rocky Mountains slice
through the dry brown summer landscape
like a saw blade
but to betray one’s gender was five times as bad
the technical term for this is amazeballs, as the videos
clearly attest
a handful of coins, a half-drunk bottle of whiskey
a pair of stiff work gloves, the palms upturned and filled
with bullets
meanwhile, the copper kings made Butte their
playground
man, fuck this place and by place
I mean the land lords
this tree is occupied
I would never permit myself to
scream in the city
I would never consider
screaming at the beach
there is no future in oil
there never was
The lines in this poem can found in the March issue, in the order in which they appear, on pages 19, 20, 28-29, 36, 36, 45, 54, 39, 39, 32, 32, 9, 50, 50, 32, 32.
Michael Schrantz is the marketing communications manager for High Country News based in Santa Fe. Email him at michael.schrantz@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the editor policy.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Tell us what you think about HCN’s website.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
