Mark Boren

Amanda Pepping

Former News Editor Neville Young (further from camera)

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Amanda Pepping and Mark Boren
(previously Neville Young to 11th April 2008)

Contact ... (9th April 2008)

If you want to contact me (Neville Young) personally after the changeover, please feel free. I won't be dealing with ITG News mail any more after midnight BST on the 11th, but you can very easily find my email on my website. I am always pleased to hear from friends and colleagues.

Alternatively, if you Google me along with some personal obsession such as Penny Lane or The Last Post then I think I'll probably be easy enough to find!

Out then back ... (9th April 2008)

I've gone a bit quiet while we celebrate an important family birthday. I'll be back, putting the finishing touches to the handover, within about 28h of this posting. Thanks.

Changes are afoot ... (26th March 2008)

As you will see from two stories posted yesterday, I am leaving the News Editor post on 11th April and being replaced by Amanda Pepping and Mark Boren who I know are going to be a superb team. I'll post a little more about this when I get a moment but for now I wanted to reassure you that the ITG News email address will continue to work - it will just reach different people from April 12th onwards. So please keep those stories coming in - thanks!

Selected older items

News contacts redone (20th March 2007)

I have shifted news contact information to a new page called, rather imaginatively, the ITG News Contacts page. There are several reasons for this, control of the flood of irrelevant messages being one of them. I hope that the new arrangements work for you. Your feedback is, as always, welcome.

Emergency server-down address

Update: sorry, we don't have this facility at the moment (March/April 2008) during a changeover period, but there may well be such an address again.

Other News contact pages

As you will have discovered if you followed the link in the paragraph above, the new setup has an FAQ, and an "other versions" page for people whose browers can't cope with the Javascript obfuscation on the main page. It is, in case you are wondering, the same system that I describe below on 20th February 2006.

Other duplicate areas policy change/clarification (14 March 2006)

Sadly this is still the closest we have to a formal policy. One day, it will actually become one.

(Addendum: 23rd September 2007: An exception may be made in any of the cases below where the item being discussed is itself a commission or product of ITG or something very close to that, and it is in the interests of the Guild and its membership that the News covers it. The News Editor does not necessarily know the entire lists of such items so a pointer would be extremely helpful.)

Following on from the last notice about CD announcements (22 February 2006), we are trying to clarify policy in all the areas which have the same potential for conflict and duplication. As I see it at present these are:

• CDs and DVDs (see 22 Feb note below)
• New music publications
• New books
• Before-the-event stories about concerts, courses, festivals etc

Please note that after-the-event stories are not a problem and never have been: there's no policy change or clarification there.

A web page setting this all out a little more clearly is in development but will have to wait till the current news backlog is conquered (which day is getting closer!) but for now you might like to see a standard email response that I am sending to incoming stories of these kinds. It's this:

Dear Colleague

Thank you very much for your email message to ITG News.

We are trying to clarify and improve the News service by making sure that stories go the right way from the beginning. This means that where a separate ITG Journal column, web page or other process exists, we will refer stories to that resource as appropriate rather than introduce duplication and possible conflict by covering them in the News. This way stories should be handled only once, by specialist editors who can give them the best possible attention.

CD and DVD stories should be directed towards the CD/DVD review process. The email address is cdreviews@trumpetguild.org

Music publication stories should go to musicreviews@trumpetguild.org

Book stories should go to bookreviews@trumpetguild.org

Event stories BEFORE THE EVENT should be directed to the ITG Calendar at calendar@trumpetguild.org. In certain unusual circumstances the News will consider before-the-event stories; policy on this is still being formulated.

On the other hand, event stories AFTER THE EVENT which report and reflect on the event will continue to handled by the News at this address.

I am sorry if this is a disappointment to you but I sincerely believe that achieving more clarity in the handling and location of stories will lead to an improvement in the quality of the news service. A web page summarizing these policies is in development.

For other outlets for your news item you may want to check Michael Anderson's excellent list of internet trumpet resources at http://www.trumpetguild.org/top25.html. I have personally found both www.tpin.org and www.trumpetherald.com very effective for disseminating new information and discussing it with trumpet colleagues, but there are many other fine resources available.

Thank you very much for thinking of ITG News and please don't hesitate to contact us next time you have some news from the trumpet world. It is not necessary to delete ITG News from mailing lists (as long as you do not mind receiving polite rejections!) as I am very happy to be kept in touch even if I cannot use the particular story.

It perhaps seems a bit impersonal to use a standard reply but it does help to cut down on the time taken to deal with stories, which has been a weakness here in the past - this way, I hope to get stories turned around faster and get more dealt with, whether they are destined for the news or not. The reply is itself, by the way, a work in progress and will be refined as we go along.

When I get the web page version done I'll mention it here.

CD announcement policy change (22 February 2006)

With immediate effect, I won't be doing announcements about CDs in the news. I don't want to disappoint anyone but it has become obvious that it wasn't really working - because most people submit their CDs for review (as they should) it meant that in some journals you'd see a review of a CD that you'd only just read about last time, with huge duplication of content between the two. This seemed to be getting a bit repetitive and wasteful of space and, in conjunction with my boss, ITG Journal Editor Gary Mortenson, I have decided to no longer carry these stories, but instead encourage colleagues to send them straight in for review. You can find all the details by clicking "Contact ITG " in the graphic at the top of each page.

I will be honouring any commitments already made to do CD-related stories up to this date. Even so, I would advise all of those people to make sure that they have also submitted the CD for review. I hope that by concentrating on other aspects of the news and letting the review staff do their job, we will improve the general coverage that we give to the trumpet world in all its glory.

Disguised emails in stories (20th February 2006)

I'm experimenting with a javascript-based email obfuscator recommended by English trumpet player John Parker. If it works as well as I hope, it should enable me to use email addresses in stories without risking exposing the address to an onslaught of spam. Here's an example - if you click this link you should find that you are about to send me email. The recent Gargan and Mathie stories both use this approach, which involves the use of Email Protector, a system very helpfully provided by Jim Tucek. This is a new area for me; if you have any problem getting email addresses out of stories like that, please don't hesitate to get in touch. You'll find a non-Javascript way of emailing me in the News Contacts area.

Update (11th April 2008)

The mail obfuscation site linked above is now gone, but the same excellent work is now being carrried on courtesy of Dan Appleman.

Random story choice (4th November 2003)

The archive of old stories is too good to ignore, so I'm going to pick out one which catches my eye more or less at random - no theme, system etc - and link it in from the news index page, changing it from time to time. To start with it was the obituary, from two years ago, of the very fine player Conte Candoli, including a marvellous tribute from Bobby Shew, and a nice B&W photo. Come back and check it from time to time and see what it changes to ...

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How to use the News pages