Megan Dotzler Hired as New F.C. Library Director
Falls Church City Manager Wyatt Shields announced Tuesday that, in consultation with the Library Board of Trustees, Megan Dotzler has been hired as the new Library Director for Falls Church’s Mary Riley Styles Public Library.
“It was clear through the recruitment process that Megan Dotzler will bring deep experience and a welcoming ‘people first’ mindset to leading the Mary Riley Styles Public Library,” Shields said in a statement. Dotzler joins the library from the Arlington Public Library in neighboring Arlington, where she was head of Central Library youth services and before that branch manager for Arlington’s Aurora Hills location. Prior to Dotzler’s time with Arlington, she was the assistant director of the Memorial Library in Acton, Massachusetts.
Dotzler earned her dual master’s degree in children’s literature and library science from Simmons College in Massachusetts.
Marshall Webber has been serving as the interim library director since September 2023 and will continue in this role until Dotzler assumes office on October 7, 2024. “I am grateful to Marshall for serving as interim director for almost a year,” added Shields. “Marshall is a mainstay of the library – supportive, kind, enthusiastic, and knowledgeable – and I know I speak for all of us in the library community in our appreciation for his dedication and leadership.”
CBC Announces New Logo Design Contest
Celebrating its 65th Anniversary, the Citizens for a Better City (CBC), the non-partisan civic organization in Falls Church, founded to provide information about and promote engagement with local government, has launched a contest to update its decades-old logo.
While initially focused on Falls Church City Public Schools students, in response to expressions of interest in participating from other City residents, the contest has been expanded to include the community at large. Contest details and instructions can be found on CBC’s website. The deadline for submissions is October 24th and the winning design’s creator will be awarded $500.
Voting to select the new logo, restricted to CBC members, will take place between November 4-13.
U.S. Journalist ‘Burn Out’ At All-Time High in U.S.
More than half of journalists in the U.S. considered quitting their job this year due to exhaustion or burnout, according to a new report by Muck Rack.
The report, which was released Tuesday, examines the state of work-life balance in journalism. Muck Rack surveyed 402 journalists in August and found that 40 percent have previously quit a job due to burnout. That statistic, along with the finding that 56 percent of journalists have thought about quitting this year, was “staggering,” said the report’s author, Matt Albasi.
“It means we have to have half as many journalists in the wings waiting to move in next year,” said Albasi, a data journalist at Muck Rack. “And we’re going to lose all this institutional knowledge if these people actually do leave.”
This is the first time Muck Rack has surveyed journalists about burnout.
The journalists surveyed reported that their primary sources of stress include their workload, salary and the expectation that they always be “on.” Nearly two-thirds of respondents said they work more than 40 hours a week, and the vast majority, or 80 percent, said they work outside regular business hours at least once a week.
At work, many said they were juggling multiple projects at once. More than 60 percent said they work on more than four stories a week.
New Study Confirms Link of ‘Head Impacts’ to Dementia
“Repetitive head impacts” (RHI) affect millions worldwide every day who participate in tackle football and other contact sports, according to a new medical research study released through the CTE Center at Boston University (CTE stands for Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy).
An evolving body of evidence suggests an association between RHI exposure and an increased likelihood of developing neurodegenerative disorders and dementia later in life, it noted, adding while “the exact pathophysiological processes leading to neurodegeneration are unknown, postmortem studies demonstrate that progressive dementia following RHI exposure is associated with an accumulation of tau proteins in the brain long recognized as associated with Alzheimer’s.” It goes on to state that “there is a need to improve our understanding of why proteins accumulate in the brain following exposure to RHI.”