Introduction by D.5520 Newsletter Editor
District Newsletter Award criteria
Content tips	15 tips on writing &editing Weekly or Monthly? 4 pages bulletin RI new site and additional content links
Lay out tips	12 tips for good lay out Newsletter template E. News / E.Mail Newsletter Newsletter Illustration
PR Tips	ICC – Are You Active or Passive? (5-08)
	PR Basic Definitions
	Thinking through Public Relations
	How to Write a Media Release
	How to get publicity for your Rotary Club
D.5520, Club-Newsletter Editors forum	Clubs Newsletter editors sharing tips

 

Welcome to the Club Newsletter Editors, Tech-Corner

This page would not exist if not for you, all the 5520 club newsletter editors who have been sending me their publication week after week, month after month. I thank you for your dedication, hard work and Rotarian spirit you are sending me over the large distance of our District to share a common concern of ours: how to serve our membership better.

The District Newsletter team built the Editors' Tech-Corner page around the two main elements that many have asked me about: content tips, lay out tips. It also will include specific tip and strategy for good PR - in your newsletter and at the community level.

This is where we will post each month technical tips and tricks that relate to the most common publishing problems, how the professionals in the industry handle it and how we can put their experience to good use for our readership.

We will post the tip(s) straight outline in bold at the top of the section and detailed explanation below. The commentaries come from years of experience with the media and attentive screening of upcoming trends in the publishing field.

Also, we are opening a third platform - YOUR  platform - the Editors forum where you are welcome to post your own suggestion, tips - any and all "newsletter-related" topic you may want to share with your colleagues newsletter editors.

Our (editor) world is often difficult, demanding - Clubs count on us week after week - Where can we find (professional) support & encouragement - and more than anything else - fresh inspiration, new material for the following week ?

When you think of it, year after year 68 Rotarians have and will step up to the (editor) challenge in our District. Where have they gone? You never hear much about them. They deliver their work and when their time comes, quietly disappear in the great Rotarian yonder. Why not make this page a District-wide laboratory to help each other deliver a better product today and tomorrow and help along the way 5520 become the best read District in the whole Rotary world!

In Rotary,

Jean Constant

District 5520,

Newsletter Editor

The District Newsletter award is intended to celebrate District 5520 clubs' livelihood and their numerous activities throughout the year. It is also a recognition of the talent and dedication of the individual Rotarians that week after week, month after month, keep their membership and the community at large informed of Rotary good deeds.

The District Newsletter Award is juried each year by a committee of 3 Rotarians appointed by the District Governor.

The award is given in 3 categories: small clubs (10-59), medium (60-99), large (100 and over) and the winners announced at the annual District Convention.

The criteria used to evaluate clubs newsletters submissions are as follow:

1. Content: 5/5
2. Lay out: 5/5
3. Originality: 5/5

Each submission is evaluated according to the the 4-Way test best practice and with keen understanding of each club difference in size, technical and financial means.

A newsletter is the paring knife of communication tools. It seems simple and is easy to take for granted. Handled well, however, it's a highly capable tool.

1. Keep your strategic audiences in mind, always. What is relevant to them? What is important?

2. Effective management involves planning and influence. Develop a publication structure, an editorial calendar and written writers guidelines.

3. A newletter must be sustainable. Be realistic about the amount of content you can consistently produce.

4. Begin with good basics and build on solid ground. The most basic newsletter should have a few lead stories, shorter news items, and a message from your leader.

5. Deadlines are sacred. Build in a safety cushion to allow for unexpected delays.

6. An editor, like a captain, needs to know where the ship is going. When dealing with writers, negotiate topic, length, treatment and deadline before assigning an article. Include important sources and the key questions which the story will address.

7. Offer feature writers a byline and an author's note. Writers gain exposure and your publication gains credibility.

8. Be concerned about how your newsletter reads before you worry about how it looks. Attractive graphics can obscure important content needs. Relevant and well-written content should be able to stand on its own, even as plain text.

9. If you're doing an emailed newsletter, 'clean and simple' spells 'effective'. Keep it to plain text. Be concise, and put an 'in-this-issue' outline at the top. The footer should have complete 'subscribe' and 'unsubscribe' information. You should archive back issues, with an annotated index, on your website.

10. Good writing and good editing require direction and hard work. Your copy should sing rather than drone. It should ring when tapped. Write compact copy in the active voice. Edit for clarity, conciseness, jargon, length, correctness. The bottom line is your readership; give them top priority.

11. Lead with strong items that have broad appeal. Learn from the best daily newspapers: "People decide within seconds whether or not to read." Your editorial or a message from the club president should have a regular spot after the lead items. In-house or more parochial news should have a regular spot much further in. This gives you the best chance of competing for attention, while those familiar with your newsletter know where to find what they want.

12. Learn the distinction between simple information and a story. Information comes to life as a story when someone talks about it. Try to cite sources as part of the way you do things.

13. Any successful newsletter depends on plentiful and reliable sources. Consider an acknowledgment box that lists everyone who contributed to an issue. This will reward people for helping and encourage others to participate.

14. Look for reader feedback, always. Watch to see how people scan your publication. Talk with a new sampling of readers after each issue. Do a formal readership survey on a regular basis. Track what's happening.

15. The true test of performance is behavior. You'll know you have an effective publication when your strategic audiences clip and save articles and when people are eager to write for it.

• Possible format: 4 pages bulletin (or 2 -1/2 pages):

What should go in a club newsletter? If you are like me - (and writing is not my best skill) - how to go about filling all those pesky white pages that keep resurfacing on your desk, month after month?

You stepped up to the job - now, time to deliver!

One way to break the writer's block and start laying the job is - well - to follow the Rotarian way. In Rotary, we have 4 avenues of service. Here you have it - 4 pages - that will make the core of your magazine! Once you add the president's message, the officers' list - the unavoidable - make up club list and - be bold - the entire membership list, you now have a 6 pages publication - maybe 8 if your fundraiser committee does its job well and books advertisement for the 2 back pages.

How do you fill the Club Service, Community, International and Vocational pages? I personally follow the 3 step ladder - Club, District, RI. One way or the other, it guarantees regular copy for each page. Of course the Club is a priority. Nothing like your board minutes to start filling those empty columns with wonderful little black characters - even pictures if you are lucky!

If there is nothing in a particular area on your board minutes - then your club has a problem - not you! All the same - and it shows how important the bulletin is to the life of the club - if there is nothing to report on, your club president & board should zero on the issue quickly and address it in the best possible manner. A healthy club is a club that develops harmoniously in all 4 areas of Service.

Now you've done your best at the club level - and there is still some white space on that page that urgently needs attention as deadline is looming larger behind your curtain (no clip art yet please!)

Where do you go next? Well - District of course! Keep in mind the District Newsletter is here to help you in any way you so choose: use it,  steal from it, do what you have to do to keep your readership interested and proud to be in the family of Rotary.

And if the District newsletter is still not enough - go to RI website - a mine of information in each and every Avenue of Service. Incidentally - a great personal reward as well - realizing how much our organization is doing every day in so many places, worldwide. Share your pride in Rotary with your readers!

Some may point out that the District newsletter is following the Leadership plan format instead of the 4 avenues of Service. Look closer - under each chapterhead: all the avenues of service are still there - in a different order maybe - but there nonetheless. The Rotary wheel will keep turning for a long long time on those simple precepts that are the core of our activities...

Another collateral benefit of a simple, clear, regular format - you gain trust & support from your reader. I am sure you all are familiar with the Sunday paper syndrome: one picks the sport section, the other the business section, a third one the comic section. Week after week people know how to quickly get to their favorite part. Why would Rotarians would be any different? One will read Community first the other Foundation first - they all will be grateful that week after week their section is where it should be with all the info you prepared for them. They may not thank you for it, but as you see them grab their copy as soon as it comes hot from the press, you and I know better - we've done our job well, helped our club and Rotary along the way - all in a good day's work! (JC)

Rotary International has a new site! - Since then, RI site has been deluged by letters of Rotarians who can't seem to find what they are looking for! I can't blame them - the "old" site was so hard and cumbersome to use to access the info you needed - it took us year of training to finally get it right -and now we need to change our habits again?

The good news is that the NEW site is much more functional and has (finally) an improved and much more powerful search engine: Before you start clicking away in the site, simply enter your question on the top right box of the opening page. It will do wonder and get you where you want to be in nano-seconds!

Now, the challenge is to formulate precisely what you are looking for - and that takes thinking and training too! But when you understand how it works (we cannot help you there unfortunately) you'll appreciate the seamless robustness and timesaving benefit of this new search engine.

And for those among us who'd rather click their way on the internet, here are some "Content" links that will take you to places where you can find a trove of information for your club's newsletter:

And not to forget the International in Rotary International, here are a few links for English, French, German and Spanish for D.5520 multilingual Rotarians

Thank you for the email informing Rio Rancho that there is a district page for newsletter - it is much appreciated. I have the luxury of a layout person at Rio Rancho Printing - kudos to Lisa Huey and her boss, Audra Dodson (Cal Mowrey's wonderful daughter) for their superior contribution of design time to our newsletter. Also my thanks go to John Hannahs who keeps his camera at the ready .Therefore my struggle to create is only the cropping of pics, writing and content.

As my 2 cents for the forum section... since this is my second time as a non-profit newsletter editor I have spent a great deal of time looking at news material and trying to find what works best when people look at a page. I really believe in minimizing the use of capitalization and multiple fonts to emphasize content. Ultimately a reader will get what they need from the article written if the content is there. The overuse of capital letters, italics and so forth, makes the process of getting through the content very hard on the eye. As to overall layout I love to look at the district newsletter because it has a nice balance of white space to content and images. It is very easy to overfill pages and then have clutter. Keeping fonts, clip art and color use to a central theme is also a great tool for creating attractive pages that make it easy to find what the reader is looking for. Thanks for picking up that beautiful picture of Ted Jurney stacking soda cases for our BBQ fundraiser in June. It's a good one! Thanks for giving us such a nice compliment by using material from our newsletter. Yours in Rotary, Michelle Frechette, Ranger Editor Rio Rancho Rotary Club

Jackie visited the Deming Club today. She ask that a copy of our club newsletter be sent to you each week. It is in Microsoft Publisher format. Please provide me with an e-mail address to send the newsletter. Thanks. (B.A.)

Comment on the District Editors page.  Lots of nit picky stuff, but I think it is important to keep our writing grammatically correct and not to casual (with the &'s).  I think it will look nicer also.   (V.E.)