By Sam Richards

Staff writer

Thursday, September 26 (2:30 p.m.): Starting today, what has for decades been a binder full of reference information for Rossmoor residents will be easier to refer to.

And it’s not just for Rossmoor residents anymore.

Included inside copies of today’s (Sept. 25) Rossmoor News is the inaugural edition of “All Around Rossmoor,” a magazine with all kinds of information about the community – its housing stock, its amenities, its clubs and other activities, emergency numbers, how to obtain basic services, and the addresses, phone numbers and emails for all of Rossmoor’s departments and other resources. In other words, its pages contain virtually everything needed to know about life in Rossmoor.

Ann Peterson, Rossmoor’s director of communications, said the magazine is designed to be more user-friendly than the old binder, which was given to new residents and updated periodically with pages that could be inserted in the three-ring hard-cover binder.

Starting now, the magazine will supplant the binder with updates published once a year.

Flipping through the new magazine should be easier than going through the old school binder. And for folks who would rather scroll than flip, the magazine also will be available in an entirely digital format, at https://rossmoor.com (under the About Us tab) and on the MyRossmoor.com website portal under Resident Info.

And while this initial version of “All Around Rossmoor” was labor-intensive, Peterson said future editions shouldn’t be. Updates to information in this first-time edition can be made easily to the newly created digital files, she said, and those updates will be included in subsequent printed editions.

“There was considerable staff time up front putting the magazine together, but there will be substantially less staff time in future years, as updating it won’t take as much effort,” Peterson said. “We’ll have the ability to update it pretty quickly online, depending on what changes need to be made.”

The magazine isn’t necessarily less expensive to produce each year, she said, but it will cost Rossmoor residents less than the binder has because the magazine will contain advertising. The ad revenue, she said, will help offset the printing and labor costs of the new publication.

While the magazine is designed to supplant the binder as a reference guide for new Rossmoor residents, it is also designed not only for longer-term residents but for prospective Rossmoorians, to provide information about Rossmoor to the larger world outside the front gate. The magazine, Peterson said, will also serve to help market Rossmoor to the world, especially online.

“This will have a bigger reach” than the newcomers’ binder has traditionally had, she said.

About 6,600 copies of the “All Around Rossmoor” magazine are going out today to Rossmoor residents, and some copies will go to advertisers. Physical copies also are available going forward at the Rossmoor News office at Creekside and at the administrative offices at Gateway.

But don’t expect to see them sitting in a stack on the counter or in a news rack.

“You’ll have to ask at the front desks,” Peterson said.