Chapters are constantly sending me clips and links from news coverage they get, mostly from their local newspapers, and sometimes in local and even national magazines. (The above is a recent clip from NEA Today, the magazine of the National Education Association. They got our membership numbers off by about 6,000, but we and Al appreciate the plug!)

Here’s the deal: What these chapters are doing is awesome, and it turns out they’re only sending us a fraction of what’s out there. But I have no idea what to do with most of these clips or how to share them. We already put some of the best on the front page and news section of barbershop.org and also in Livewire. Is that enough?Near the bottom of this post, I’ll show y’all the results of one day’s worth of news coverage of the term “barbershop” sent in my daily e-mail from Google Alerts. (Google searches news sites, other websites and blogs for new references to your search term, then sends you the most relevant-seeming references. Try it!)

I also sometimes get some very high-quality clips that chapters send me. Here are examples well worth your time. I’d like to find a way to share more of these:

• The Cape Breton Post’s story about our Harmonizer cover story on the Cape Breton Chapter.
• A great piece on the Kansas City area’s Central Standard Chorus, starting on page 24 of the latest Shawnee Magazine.
• A beautiful, professional multimedia Singing Valentines story following The Coachmen quartet in Concord, N.H., courtesy of The Concord Monitor newspaper.
• Milwaukee’s Heart of Harmony Chorus was included in the section of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that’s usually reserved for local bands. (Ever thought of doing that with your local media?)
• A great piece on the Sounds of Illinois Chorus.
• Young women singing in New Zealand.

I also have a pile of similar newspaper clippings and local magazine profiles. I don’t know what to do with them all.

Here are my challenges as far as putting these clips on the magazine, and I welcome you to tell me my thinking is all messed up:

* The journalists who write these are trying to familiarize the general public with a topic that’s unfamiliar to their readers (barbershop harmony). That’s great for the chapter and its community profile, and it’s great that chapters want to share the fact that they snagged great coverage with the rest of the barbershop world. But to fellow barbershoppers, the most informative aspect is “here’s the kind of coverage you can get with a little bit of PR hustle.”

* Reprinting these features in the magazine is time and space prohibitive. It’s a long process to get permission to reprint other pubs’ stories, and there’s often a cost as well, particularly for the photos. And as implied above, they would take up a lot of space for limited punch.

* For every story that goes in the magazine, there are five that didn’t get in because either there wasn’t enough space or I lacked the resources to pursue them. I try to get a big variety of stories in the magazine, first priority going to stories with an angle of “here’s a great outcome you could get, too” or “here’s an example of why we’re proud to be barbershoppers” or just “this is just too wide-spread/interesting/heart-rending/unique not to share.” So it’s hard for stories written for non-barbershoppers to compete in the highly competitive environment of stories that are by barbershoppers and for barbershoppers.

* Man, are we ever busy here at headquarters. Just putting together the links for this post took a lot longer than I thought it would, and they were already all in one place. Whatever we do, it better benefit our members.  ”How much is enough?” is the question. I doubt you’d appreciate it if we told you everything we know about, unfiltered, because keeping track of that is literally a full-time job. And if you want to see everything that hits the web, you can create your own Google Alert.

So what’s the solution? Where do we put all this stuff where y’all can find it should you care to read it? Are just the top links that we list in Livewire and on the “Latest News Items” section on the front page of barbershop.org good enough for you? Is there anything more we could or should do to share these stories with our members?

Your thoughts and feedback are welcome!

As promised, here are just the top 20 Google alert items for “barbershop” only from yesterday. I’ll get a whole bunch of new ones today. I’ve removed items having to do with hair-cutting establishments.

Your comments are appreciated!