Criticisms

As with anything there are always criticisms. Now, most times you hope that they are of the constructive variety or at least you should try to view them in that light. Well some of the criticisms that I have had (or feedback for a less negative word) include:

1. There needs to be a section that contains jokes
2. There needs to be a more even spread across the tri-county area (a lot of the content came from Broward addresses)
3. There needs to be less emphasis on the obvious.

There may have been others but I will concentrate on these 3 (specifically item 3 above).

Adding a section that contains jokes might not necessarily fit the model of the Caribbean Business Digest but a cartoon of some sort might work. So while I don’t intend to transform this into a comic, a cartoon that has some relevant business tone might be a good attraction. In fact, other business publications do have an editorial cartoon (Business Week has Drawn and Quartered). So I will consider this for a future issue.

The comment about a lot of Broward material is true, and will be addressed. However, the intended reach is even beyond the tri-county area so there may come a time when the content may not have a South Florida connection all together!

The third item above seems abstract. Here is how it came about: I was asked “how do you decide on what to print?” My answer “I try to print items that I believe people will be interested in and know about. For example the Marlon Hill article was chosen because of his name recognition and people know who he is.” Well there in lies a problem. While I think the article mentioned above was timely and useful, it would be a mistake to continuously print articles on people that the readers already know about. After all, in most Caribbean publications and even some non-Caribbean oriented ones Marlon is featured quite often. So the advice given to me was to not print what everyone else is printing, find a different approach.

This will be evident in the Christmas edition in December. That issue will feature a nice mix of articles that are both Caribbean in nature as well as non-Caribbean. The aim is not to confine the magazine to just Caribbean oriented stories but to bring reach and variety to the Caribbean readers and to take the Caribbean beyond the Caribbean community. This approach reflects the basic tenet of the Caribbean Business Digest. So I am eagerly awaiting the release of the December edition to see what the reaction will be.