Volunteers with fresh eyes to advise Modesto Bee Editorial Board
Following a two-year hiatus, The Modesto Bee Editorial Board is eager to welcome three volunteers to our newly reconstituted Community Advisory Board.
Joyce Parker, Rosalee Rush and Salvatore Salerno have agreed to join in for the next six months when the editorial board meets with local business, government and nonprofit leaders to discuss issues affecting our area.
Parker, Rush and Salerno will bring to our discussions and deliberations valuable wisdom, helping to inform and shape editorial opinion. A broader mix of geographical, political and philosophical viewpoints will add to the mix of our editorial board, currently composed of Opinions Editor Garth Stapley, Managing Editor Patty Guerra and Research and Information Specialist Maria Figueroa.
Parker for years has been a leader on the Del Rio Property Owners Association board. She is retired after a 30-year career in information technology with Stanislaus County. Topics of her letters to the editor of The Bee range from farming and river flow to the coronavirus pandemic and American pride.
Rush joined California State University, Stanislaus in 2017 as senior associate vice president for communications, a title reporters often shorten to “spokeswoman.” While unpaid Bee advisory board members usually have little or no experience with newspapers, Rush earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism from Michigan State University, and also achieved a doctorate in higher education leadership with Western Michigan University. Before coming to Turlock, she worked at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania.
Salerno periodically shows up in our news pages because of his position for 12 years as president of the Stanislaus Audubon Society and as Modesto’s poet laureate since 2020, the ninth person to serve in that post. A retired English teacher, he also has contributed letters to the editor in our opinions section.
“A town is much more than its buildings. It’s people, and what they can dream,” Salerno said in a beautiful ode to Modesto’s essential workers, a poem he composed and read before the Modesto City Council in June as the region emerged from one COVID-19 lockdown.
Community Advisory Board members will attend The Bee’s interviews with political candidates running in the June election for a slew of public offices on all levels of government.
They include Stanislaus County sheriff and district attorney; two county supervisor races; two seats each representing Stanislaus County in the California Assembly and Senate; and two House of Representatives seats. As always, these recorded debate-style forums will be available for viewing at modbee.com, and they will help inform The Bee’s editorial endorsements.
Strength in diversity
A letter to the editor Parker penned in 2019, when she took issue with a columnist, aptly captures what we hope to gain from inviting nonjournalists to rub shoulders with us. She wrote, “Do not fall for the line that those with whom you disagree are hateful, greedy or bigoted. Find out why we disagree. Perhaps you’ll find out how much we really agree on.”
Readers may recall The Bee’s previous visiting editor panels, which for two decades allowed passionate, engaged people from throughout our community a unique, unpaid experience with professional journalism while giving The Bee the benefit of fresh eyes and diverse, outsider perspective. The pandemic forced us to pause that program in 2020 after Puja Mehta and Keir Wilkinson assisted us through primary races that year.
The Community Advisory Board continues that tradition in alignment with all 30-plus McClatchy newspapers across the United States.
In six months, Parker, Rush and Salerno will rotate out and our editorial board will invite a new cohort to join us. The July-to-December term of that future group will feature November ballot campaigns, including many races for mayor and city council, and school and irrigation boards, and any county offices requiring runoffs, plus local measures involving bonds, sales tax and such.
If you are interested in serving the last half of 2022, or know someone who should, drop us a line at mfigueroa@modbee.com.