I’ll be the first to admit there’s nothing quite like a presidential election year in New Hampshire, one of the benefits that comes with living and working here in the first-in-the-nation primary state.

Coordinating coverage for the 1992, 1996, 2000 and 2004 New Hampshire primaries during my previous life here at The Telegraph ranks among the most exhilarating – and, yes, draining – times in my more than three decades in the industry.

Running a close second were 1993, 1997, 2001 and 2005 – the years immediately following the presidential primaries/state primaries/general election trifecta.

Why?

Because it presented an opportunity to step back, take a breath, reassess, set new goals and then try to achieve them.

Even though I spent this past election year as your editorial page editor, I feel pretty much the same way today. Now that the editorial board meetings with the candidates, endorsement editorials and election-related letters have come to a close, it’s time to move on and try to find some new ways to better engage our readers.

In fact, you already should have noticed a few changes in our print and online Opinion pages in recent weeks:

– Building off the popularity of our Saturday You Said It column – a compilation of comments posted online to some of our best-read stories, opinion pieces or letters of that week – we introduced the “Online Comment of the Day.”

Usually found in a box at the bottom, right-hand corner of the page, we select one story and present the headline, opening paragraph and what we determine to be one of the more interesting or thought-provoking comments posted online.

The new feature, which we started a few weeks ago and runs Sunday through Friday, is intended to provide another element on the page and perhaps encourage some readers to join the online discussion on that topic.

– On Sundays, we’ve started to publish more guest commentaries from readers and individuals affiliated with state and national organizations.

Last week, for example, we published pieces by Tom Irwin, a senior attorney with the Conservation Law Foundation in Concord, on the potential benefits of the federal stimulus package on commuter rail in New Hampshire; John B. McCormack, bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Manchester, on the inauguration and the March for Life taking place two days apart in Washington; and Guy Mainella, a former Boston radio sports talk-show host who resides in Merrimack, on “If I were Obama, here’s what I would say . . .”

Given Sundays can be a more leisurely day – at least for some of us – it seemed to be a good time to offer you a collection of longer, more thoughtful pieces.

– For those of you familiar with Twitter, the free social networking service, we now have an account for our Opinion page, @TelegraphEdit.

Links to our editorial page content are now fed into our Twitter account early each morning; I’m also using the Twitter messaging system to post brief previews each evening of what you can expect to see the next morning in the paper on online.

As of Friday, 17 individuals or organizations had chosen to follow our Twitter feed, even though we have yet to really publicize it. It is my hope that as this new community builds, we will be able to find some more innovative ways to use it.

If you are intrigued but aren’t that familiar with Twitter, go to www.twitter.com and open an account. Once there, just select the “add” link adjacent to “Following” tab, then type in “TelegraphEdit.”
Each morning, you will receive brief descriptions and links to our editorials, op-ed pieces, guest commentaries, letters, comments of the day and any other items on the page.

Our next goal is to move our Reader Advisory Network into a more user-friendly location in our online forum section. In addition to making it easier for me to communicate with the group as a whole, we may set it up so members can interact among themselves, too.

For those of you not familiar with this group, it originally was formed back in 2003 in an attempt to better involve our readers in the content of the newspaper. As such, the network consists of local residents who are willing to share their e-mail addresses with us in order to serve on our informal advisory group.

Once the technical work is complete – hopefully in the next week or so – we will notify all our existing members and let them know how to get access to the forum. We also will continue to recruit new members to the group as well.

These are some of the ideas rattling around in my head as we enter 2009. Since I’ll be meeting with my boss in a couple of weeks to set goals for the year, now would be a good time to contact me and share some of your ideas, too.

Nick Pappas is editorial page editor at The Telegraph. He can be reached at 594-6505 or npappas@nashuatelegraph.com.