1168 The Brother; being selective with your news; you are a news-writer
austra L asia 1168

The Brother; being selective with your news; you are a news-writer

ROME: 16th June 2005 --  One should be immediately honest - those are three different headlines!  The connecting point is Bosconet-austraLasia.
    You will now find abundant material on The Salesian Brother, in English, on Bosconet.  Just go to the home page and click on any reference to The Brother there.  In fact, we have included everything that has become available in the past 10 years, and in some cases longer.  There was a very recent comment made by the Rector Major in Piedmont which has yet to be translated into English, but as soon as it is, we will include that too.
    The second part of the headline is also worth considering.  You can now search austraLasia news (for all of 2005) according to Province, again by going to Bosconet.  You will see the indication at the top of the home page.  The break-up is revealing;  it enables one to see the range of news items coming from each part of the region.  There are sectioins of a more general nature too, either for the region, for the Salesian world or for general news. 
   An even better service you can benefit from is that each of these sections is also RSS-enabled.  This means that you could filter out or filter in a particular section if you receive austraLasia by RSS.  This service is being offered as a small step in an 'education' process to encourage readers to make choices.  If you are already receiving austraLasia via RSS, you will be receiving all sections and most would want to continue with that to know the region better.  But you may be especially interested or not interested, as the case may be, in South Asia Region news, for example.  RSS enables you to make those choices.
    Remember - every reader is a news-writer!  Certainly there are regular correspondents, but there is not a single reader of austraLasia who cannot him or herself send in a bit of news.  You do not need to 'write' your news.  The following guidelines are recommended for providing the basics that enable us to write it for you, if you wish:
    - think of a brief title/headline that captures your item of news (the headline above is unusual and normally unacceptable!  There are three of them there)
    - offer no more than three (3) main points.  If there are details to add, do not offer more than seven (7) details in total.
    - if there is a source of your news, indicate this
    - indicate, somewhere, your province
    - indicate, somewhere, the sector of activity: Youth, Formation, Communication, Salesian Family, Missions, Economy, EAO general, SDB general, Other
And that's it, really.
    One final issue: do recent issues of austraLasia come with funny    characters at the beginning of some lines?  And, importantly, did THIS one come completely clean and as you would expect?  The problem is one of coding, and we need to get it right.  Your advice can help.  Please tell us.
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AustraLasia is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific.  It also functions as an agency for ANS based in Rome.  For RSS feeds, subscribe to www.bosconet.aust.com/rssala.xml.  If you subscribe, email this information and your name will come off the regular email list.  RSS eliminates problems such as multiple mailings, viruses, email bloat.  Think about it!