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Why Add Your Profile to the HCS Directory?

This is a work-in-progress feature of Hudson Common Sense to map Hudson’s public (elected or appointed) leadership and help our readers and residents at large understand the city's power structures during this once-in-a-generation Charter Reform evolution. If you hold public office or a publicly appointed position, or play an influential and public role in the media or community sphere, we invite you to proactively send your preferred photo and title to **[email protected].**

This gives you an extra option of a professional, stylized profile photo so that your constituents can recognize you, whether at a Common Council meeting or the Farmer’s Market.

We want to ensure that the basic “profiles” are both accurate and professional. This Directory will have 50-100 profiles, mainly elected people, candidates for office, and a sprinkling of media personalities and leaders from and Hudson’s civic establishment.

Read more below how we hope to protect resident privacy. While America guarantees free speech and plenty of public data, that does not mean that all public information ought to be shared proactively, at every junction.

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How To Join the Directory

To submit your profile, email [email protected] with the following existing public information that we hope to organize for each profile:

✔️ Ward, Current title or position, relevant prior held positions

✔️A square headshot of yourself, with dimensions of at least 1024 x 1024 pixels

If you are not in public office, not a candidate for public office, not a major blog figure, but you still would like to be included in the Directory with your stylized headshot, we’d be delighted to add you.

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What Is Our Approach to Privacy, Photos, and Real or Pseudonymous Names?

🔒 Privacy: We do not publish private information. We respect the privacy of all individuals, making exceptions only for public officials or private citizens who actively engage in the public realm to influence public funding and spaces.

👤 Names: A Directory should reflect how a community actually speaks, not just how a courthouse files paperwork.

• If you are in government and hold institutional power over the public, we publish Full Names to ensure transparency and civic accountability. These names should already be public since they were on election ballots or public appointment letters.
• For individuals that form part of Hudson’s economic engine, the press, and the digital vanguard, we honor Preferred Names and Pseudonyms, or simply default to first names. Whether you are a small business owner, a reporter, a digital agitator, or an anonymous memelord (👀🐋) we respect the tradition of being known by the name you’ve chosen for yourself. This way Hudson residents and neighbors know you, have your number and know when to find you at the Farmer’s Market, but your strong opinions on Hudson’s Blue Bag Vending Machine will not be raised by the Japanese consular official in your visa interview.

📸 Photos: We don’t use "gotcha" shots; we take the preferred photo that YOU send us. Tanya Malott, who lives right here in Hudson, has photographed multiple Nobel Laureates and newsmakers across America and is available for portrait and headshots. She comes highly recommended. 😉

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What is the Common Sense Directory?

This is not a social network or an exhaustive list of every resident in town. Instead, this is a limited scope and highly functional, hopefully utility-driven directory designed for both new and long-term residents to understand exactly who runs the municipality. We want to demystify local power structures by mapping the individuals who drive the conversation, lead charter reform, shape tax policy, and anchor our local commerce.

Our focus is strictly public: government employees and on the margin, nonprofit organizations that receive public funding or subsidies to influence outcomes for taxpayers. Privacy is a principle, not a courtesy.

We also believe in accuracy. If you find errors, wish to update an entry, or prefer a different image, we welcome your input at **[email protected].**

As part of our writing process, we make a good-faith effort to reach primary subjects of stories in advance to fact-check and give them a heads up. We call this “calling in, before calling out.” However, if subjects have been consistently non-responsive to prior outreach or have repeatedly ignored requests for comment, we may not reach out again in every instance. More on this topic in our post on ***The Threshold Test.***

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See Our Example “Profile Box” Containing Standard HCS Portraits and Parameters:

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Leslie Knope:

Municipality: Hudson - 1st Ward Current Position: Director of Unfettered Optimism; Proprietor, SuperAwesome

• Previously Held Positions: </aside>

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Ron Swanson:

Municipality: Ghent Current Position: Ghent Town Supervisor; Chair of Columbia Taxpayers’ Union

• Previously Held Positions: </aside>

See Our Treatment of Photos Here:

We use a photo treatment that is inspired by the Economist Magazine’s “By Invitation” column.. We do this both to give residents a neutral to positive portrait, as a hat tip to the WSJ pixelated headshots, and to visually standardize our Directory, Editorials, and Guest Op-Eds. Read more here about the **WSJ’s famous headshot technology.**

Besides, how many times should Gossips have to “screenshot” the face of an important elected official or non-resident lobbyist from a low resolution Common Council meeting video.

Below is a representative example of individuals from Hudson’s Executive, Legislative, as well as the Department Heads and Media Figures.

Step 1: Submit Your Real Portrait Photo →

Step 2: We generate an HCS Portrait

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