At last: Salem takes halting first steps towards better public outreach

This is the standard icon to indicate RSS feeds. Image via Wikipedia

A first step at last.

If you go to the City of Salem webpage and click on the little (nonstandard) orange envelope icon in the top right corner you will go to a subscription management page (which includes an explanation of what an RSS feed is) and you can sign up for one of three feeds (city news (press releases), police news, and fire news).

The implementation so far is clunky and very incomplete -- all the links on all the city's pages take you to the same place (instead of providing you with a feed for that page), the subscription management page, where there are (so far) just the three feeds (general city press releases, fire news, and police news).

So there is not yet a feed for the things that would be most useful to have promptly: land use applications, zoning change requests, development permit applications, etc. Presumably feeds for those are coming --- after all, we're "streamlining" the development ordinances now, so helping citizens learn of proposed land use changes as soon as they are proposed would go a long way toward making the process better.

If these feeds are implemented throughout all the city's web pages with an eye towards helping citizens stay current, these feeds could become quite helpful in promoting timely citizen participation.

Question: : 1. What is RSS? ‎(1) RSS (or Really Simple Syndication) feeds are free content feeds from websites that contain article headlines and summaries and links back to full text articles on the web.
Question: : 2. What are the benefits of using RSS? ‎(1) RSS is fast and sometimes easier than receiving updates in your email inbox. It doesn't clog your inbox with emails or require you to revisit websites that you're interested in. Instead, the information comes to you when you want it.

Click on the section title link to obtain the RSS URL, which you will see in the "Address" field of your browser. Simply copy this URL and follow the instructions for your particular news reader to subscribe.

Question: : 3. What tools do I need to use RSS? ‎(1) To start using RSS, you need a special news reader or aggregator that displays RSS content feeds from websites you select. There are many different news readers available, many of which are free of charge. Most are available as desktop software that you download and install on your computer.

There are some email programs that can handle RSS feeds (e.g., Thunderbird, Outlook, Groupwise, ...), there are browser-based plug-ins or extensions (e.g., Firefox, IE, ...) or self-contained applications to install (e.g., Feedreader). Another way for you to read feeds would be through a Web-based solution (e.g., Bloglines.com). Some programs are free and some charge a fee, so be sure to read the fine print on the software before installing it.

Several Web-based news readers are available as well.

List of news readers (Yahoo)
List of news readers (Google)

Once you have set up your news reader, you simply subscribe to the RSS content feeds you want.

The person to thank and to contact to suggest improvements is

Mike Gotterba, CSP
City of Salem
555 Liberty Street SE, Room 325
Salem, OR 97301-3503
503-588-6211 or

503-588-6255 or
direct-503-588-6347
cell 503-949-1015
mgotterba@cityofsalem.net