First off, I just want to thank Jim Quinn for calling me personally to address my concerns.

To respond to the first real question regarding going through "proper channels": I posed the question of the missing April K-Factor (on-line or in print) through the NSRCA E-mail Discussion List. The message went totally unanswered. I then posed the question to my NSRCA District VP. He voiced my concerns to the board, but got no direct response he could give me. I then attempted to post the content of this thread as an e-mail to the NSRCA discussion list, and my e-mail was rejected due to problems between my ISP e-mail servers and the NSRCA list. So that is why this was posted here. Disagree with the forum or not, it was the forum I had at my disposal.

That being said, it is my understanding that I may have joined the NSRCA too late in March to have received the April issue. Not a big deal, but then where was the on-line version? Scott McHarg has been nice enough to step in and explain what the hold-up was in that regard. Thank you, Scott. That being said, my main question has been answered.

Further discussion should probably be had regarding the viability of continuing the K-Factor in its printed form versus going 100% electronic. Also, I think serious thought should be given to paying a publishing company a one-time fee to set us up with an easy-to-use template where the K-Factor editor could simply drop in the raw text from the articles and have the electronic version done and ready to go. It is my understanding (from my discussion with Jim) that Ryan's assessment of the process was correct when he was a DVP, but has since changed: the board members submit articles to the editor. The editor then proofreads the articles for spelling and grammar. The editor then submits the articles in Word format to the publisher, who does a proof. The proof is then distributed to the board members to make sure their article was still intact. The board members must then OK the proof, and the publisher is given the go-ahead. Jim said this process was put in place because there was an issue with the publisher duplicating previous articles instead of running the current ones. Sounds a little tedious. Seems to me once the editor has done his job of submitting the information, that the editor could verify the correct articles in the proof rather than each individual board member needing to receive the proof. Might cut down on a little of the lag in the publishing timeline from submission to final OK of the proof. Also, it seems to me our publisher would be able to easily produce a PDF with the hotlinks already embedded, ready for the website. Sounds like Scott's being forced to do work that could already have been done at that point.

Anyway, I'm going to step off my soapbox now, and thank those NSRCA board members, Scott McHarg and Jim Quinn, for answering my questions.