"To be more oriented or to pay attention to readers settled in Slovakia, which means to carry everyday news, because this is the only English newspaper about Slovakia and in Slovakia. I personally would welcome more news from other newspapers, such as translated articles and editorials. The TV program would be OK as well. I could imagine The Slovak Spectator as a full weekly newspaper, if not daily, comparable to Sme or other dailies. Also, you should be aware that your newspaper plays a significant role in
teaching English and in the linguistics field as the originator of equivalents for the names of Slovak institutions and special terminology. And what happened to the Slovak-English language column?"
- Jan Makovník, Komárno
"I'd love to see more coverage of Slovak sports. Every newspaper should have a good sports section!"
- Gray Gainor, Bratislava
"I would appreciate a regular series on integrating into Slovak life, including articles on local culture, language, etc."
- Johan Karlsson, Vienna
"I suggest that TSS publish listings of TV programs that are accessible in English (Duo)."
- Miroslav Bázlik, Bratislava
"Coverage of Central and Eastern Slovakia, almost everything in your paper concerns the richer Western part. There is much more to Slovakia than Bratislava."
- J. Cimbalova, Košice
"The Slovak Spectator has a lot to offer all the expats in the country, but it could provide a LOT more. For example, there is a big market for EFL here, and it would be great to locate more legit employers through a legitimate news source like this, as opposed to random searches on the Internet. In short, become more accessible to more people, and get the word out about your paper!! People will use you if they know about you. I found you on my own while I was looking for a EFL job, and I would much rather in hindsight have found a job through you."
- Matthew Latham, Levice
"It would be nice to have an article every week about a point of interest in Slovak culture, whether that be an event in history, a region, or a well-known festival. Just something to familiarize
foreigners with interesting things in Slovak culture, because there are a lot of them! Perhaps it would be best to have a foreigner write it, as they might be able to see things of interest more easily than a Slovak."
- Brynne Lancaster, Trnava
Response:
Thanks for all the great suggestions. Here's what we're doing about some of them:
Sports: As it turns out, one of our salespeople, Zuzana Burská, is an informed and discerning sports fan, and has volunteered to cover the beat. Her first contribution will appear in the November issue of SPEX, in a format rather like Around Slovakia. I will try to convince her to do a weekly digest as well for the newspaper.
Regional coverage: I have been in touch with the 12 regional newspapers within the Petit Press publishing house, which owns the Spectator as well, and they have agreed to send us their weekly coverage. They are published in places like Kysuce and Žiar nad Hronom, as well as bigger cities like Košice, so they should give us a pretty good selection of regional news, which you can expect to see in both the Spectator and SPEX beginning in December.
Translated articles: We have already begun to do this, and you may have seen reports from the aktualne.sk server written by Marek Vagovič and Lucia Nicholsonová in the paper and in the monthly magazine. I have also been translating selected opinion pieces and publishing them in the "Press Digest" section on Page 4 (look especially for pieces by Marián Leško from the Sme daily). I have long wanted to assemble a "best of" collection of the week's news from Slovak media, and now that I have started to do so, and build bridges with Sme, Trend and aktualne.sk, I realize that it's very doable, and nicely complements what we do ourselves.
TV program/culture articles: I have passed on these suggestions to Jana Liptáková and Stefan Hogan, who put together our cultural coverage, and we are looking for ways to do what was suggested. Both have other jobs as well, but once we set up a system it shouldn't prove too hard to offer that kind of information.
Job listings/classifieds: The only option here is to make job listings for native English speakers free. I haven't discussed it yet with my colleagues, but I expect we will start doing so after Christmas.
