Editors' Notebook

During my first week working a real ag journalism job, I was repeatedly reminded of one fact: Farmers are busy people, and my charge was to boil valuable information down so it can be quickly consumed by busy people.

That was my editor's way of saying -- "get to the point, knucklehead. We're not writing novels here." In general, ag media has continued to live by that guidance through today, and DTN is always looking for ways to get critical information to you as efficiently as possible.

Having just violated that charge with the previous 60-odd words, let me get to the point: We have a new feature that we hope can help busy farmers be aware of and prioritize events and subjects that may influence them in the coming week.

It's called "The Week Ahead: Top 5 Things To Watch," and it's our latest effort to both keep you informed and be sensitive to your busy schedules.

At the end of each week, we'll poll the DTN/Progressive Farmer newsroom for the key events, subjects, meetings, weather or markets activities, that our team expects to see and report on the following week.

This new Top 5 feature is paired with our long-lived "What DTN is Watching" article which is available on DTN subscription products. That piece features commodity-markets shaping events and a short synopsis of expected weather factors for the following day and week.

We cover dozens of things a day, so whittling that to the Top 5 will force the team to think about the critical things you really shouldn't miss.

Look for the Top 5 Things graphic accompanying this blog, and you can also watch for it on our social media platforms. You'll find it posted over the weekend, a time when we're seeing more and more of you logging into our online and satellite products to both catch up on the events from the previous week and get a handle on the things to come. You can see our first Top 5 highlights at https://www.dtnpf.com/….

Let us know what you think of our "heads up" to you each week, and if there are other ways we can improve the efficiency of getting critical information in front of you, please email me.

Greg D. Horstmeier can be reached at greg.horstmeier@dtn.com

Follow him on Twitter @greghorstmeier

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