From the editors

By Sara & Rob Bednark
The Portland Upside
August 2009

This past month we’ve been talking a lot about what we want for content in The Portland Upside. One of the most important criteria is that stories focus on positive things happening in the Portland metro area. Something that makes you say, “Wow! That person, organization, business, or in the case of Zadok, that dog is doing something great for the community.”

Because Portland is...well, Portland, The Portland Upside will always include articles on the great local nonprofits. Travis, the unlikely founder of Sanctity of Hope, drew us in with his humble and practical approach to the question of giving money to the homeless (“Can you spare a token?”).

Of course we don’t expect every article to click with every reader. Some of us may not want to go running at five in the morning as Nicole describes in “Waking up before the sun,” while others are already tying their shoes.

So our second standard for The Portland Upside is variety. We want variety of topics, voices and genres. We’d love to expand our content to include cartoons, artwork, more poetry and more profiles of everyday Portlanders, like the one Sophia did on Joe Warren and his amazing life-size artwork (“Artist welds new life into old metal”) or Kay’s article profiling some of the people in her neighborhood (“Planned neighborhood becoming a robust community”).

“Voices around town” is an exciting new addition for The Portland Upside because it allows us to showcase more of Portland’s voices. A hot Sunday afternoon on Mt. Tabor was the perfect place to ask the question, “What do you like about Portland?” We couldn’t get people to stop talking!

We hope you all enjoy this issue of The Portland Upside and we always invite you to send us your feedback, article suggestions and content submissions of any kind.

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Contact us at editors@portlandupside.com or 503-663-1526 and visit us online at www.PortlandUpside.com