Clarissa Balbalian (Chair, National Data Committee)
The Communicator: Volume 6, Issue 1, January 2025
Congratulations! If you are reading this, you are probably one of just over a thousand subscribers to The Communicator. This article discusses our readership, introduces the newsletter team, and links to the most popular articles of 2024.
On average, about half of our subscribers open the newsletter email each month and a smaller percentage click on a link within the newsletter campaign.
This trend has remained steady since we began publishing in 2021 and is a statistic that is considered average to very good for a newsletter and for an audience that is primarily divided among disciplines in agriculture, education, and government. That said, the goal of your Communicator team is a 100% click rate each month!
The Communicator Team
Your newsletter team consists of Clarissa Balbalian, Ray Adcock, and Andrew Daigle.
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Clarissa is the editor of the newsletter and the diagnostician and lab manager at the Mississippi State University Plant Diagnostic Lab. If you have content that you would like published, please send it to her at newsletter_editor@npdn.org. |
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Ray formats the newsletter in MailChimp. He also is an applications analyst with Clemson Public Service and Agriculture and is a graduate student in Plant Pathology at Clemson University. |
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Andrew handles the NPDN web portal side of the newsletter, contributes articles to the IT Bytes section of the Communicator, and sends the MailChimp campaigns to our membership. Most of you are familiar with Andrew as the NPDN IT manager. |
“Creating the newsletter is both rewarding and challenging. It requires careful consideration of the audience you’re addressing and the authors whose work you’re showcasing. Details like headers, spacing, and alt text may seem minor but can significantly impact accessibility. It is a privilege to share this information with others and collaborate with such an amazing team”. – Ray Adcock
Hot Topics From 2024
Just in case you were busy and didn’t get to them, the most popular articles of 2024 are listed below in order of publication.
- The Return of USDA’s U.S. National Fungal Databases
- NPDN Labs Face Funding Challenges
- New Labs for the University of Idaho Plant Diagnosticians
- NPDN Letter of Support by Timothy Widmer, National Program Leader-Plant Disease, USDA-ARS
- What’s the Value in Finding No Disease? >$7.2M/year in the SPDN
- Detection in Arizona Ensures Consumer Safety of Fresh Microgreens
- Preparations Pay Off by Jan Byrne, NCPDN Assoc. Director, Michigan State University
- Managing a Disease on Maine’s Beech Trees: It Takes a Network
- Early Detection and Fungicide Resistance Supported the Potato Industry in Florida
- A Checklist for Triage of Plant Diagnostic Samples
- Detection of Lepidopteran Defoliator of Haskaps in Southcentral Alaska
- Almond Crop Yields Threatened by Red Leaf Blotch, a Disease New to California
- IT Bytes – Two Factor Authentication (2FA) Requirement
- Post-Meeting Survey Link (in Reflections on the 2024 National Meeting)
- The Challenge of Funding Plant Disease Diagnostic Labs: Suggestions from the Idea Café at APS Plant Health 2024
- Resources for Managing Unknown Irritations Suspected as Caused by Arthropods
You can find and search all back issues of The Communicator online.
