Member Services reaches out to connect newcomers, veterans.

Plans are now in place to serve new and experienced NCEW members throughout the year. Here's how to get involved.

Think of the Member Services Committee as a work in progress.

That's because the purpose of the year-old committee is to do what it can to help members improve their work, solve professional problems, and share innovative ideas. It's a networking tool that goes a step beyond the annual conventions and occasional regional conferences.

We're open to ideas that will help us serve NCEW members better.

The objectives of the committee are:

* To provide a mentoring link between new members and experienced NCEW members.

* To encourage exchanges of editorial pages among members.

* To offer critique services for newspaper and broadcast editorial operations.

The mentoring project began last January, and we're working to make it more relevant to members. Committee members contact new NCEW members to ask them what services they'd like from the organization.

Sometimes new members have never worked on editorial pages previously and would like a few months of contact with experienced members for help with a variety of editorial page problems. Sometimes new members want very specific information, such as how to connect with someone who has coordinated a special project. Sometimes they want other members to critique their pages to see what can be done better.

The committee's job is to make those connections. In addition, we'll make connections for existing members who want someone else's ideas on a new project.

We've also recreated the critique service to make it flexible. In the past, the critique service mimicked sessions at the conventions in which about a week's worth of material is prepared for evaluation.

That can still be done. But there are also times when members would like something less than that. They'd like to be able to have only a couple of editorials critiqued, or to be able to send over individual editorials from time to time to volunteers on the critique committee.

We can arrange whatever fits the members' needs. That includes e-mail, fax, phone, and "snail mail" (i.e., USPS). We work with broadcast members through the Broadcast Editorial Committee.

The Page Exchange among members serves as a very useful guide to what other editorial pages are doing across the United States and Canada, and it's very easy to participate in. Every now and then, you mail your page to a couple of addresses on the NCEW list. So that members will understand why they're getting the page, label it "NCEW Exchange."

You can either write in addresses from the NCEW directory, or better yet, buy a full list of labels from NCEW headquarters for $10. (Contact Tomi Fontaine or Cora Everett at NCEW Headquarters, 6223 Executive Blvd., Rockville MD 20852, telephone [phone].)

Sharing your pages encourages others to share, and we all get to steal the best ideas.

One final note: Phil Haslanger, former co-chair of this committee with me, has stepped down this year from a formal position, although he still remains a committee member. He worked hard in helping set up the structure of this committee last year and in getting it in operation. His contributions are greatly appreciated.

If you want services from the committee or want to participate as a volunteer, please contact me at The Ann Arbor News (after 2 p.m. is best) at 313/994-6863 or at home 313/981-1028. Write me at the News, P.O. Box 1147, Ann Arbor MI 48106. Or e-mail me at [e-mail]

NCEW member Kay Semion is editorial page editor of The Ann Arbor News in Michigan.