I've been a local newsletter editor approximately since I moved to the East (16 years, give or take 6 months). Frankly, Chronicler* is the only Scadian office I'm interested in holding because
(1) I can aggregate info about Actual Period Stuff(tm)--museum exhibits, concerts, plays--as well as Scadian info (admittedly, there are only a few locations in the U.S. where I could do this--NYC, DC, Boston, maybe Bay Area);
(2) I can provide an outlet for the creative work of local cooks, poets etc. (I am fortunate to have several talented and generous writers in the Province);
(3) I derive some aesthetic satisfaction from producing an attractively-laid-out publication.
Sadly, the rules and regs coming down from the Corporate level (wrt photo/article release forms, "advertising" anything that charges admission, etc.) are making the job less fun, and that, if anything, may eventually convince me to quit :-/
A propos not much, I have never published an electronic newsletter, partly because I don't have coding chops (although I know enough HTML now that I could do what I wanted to do with that and some boilerplate code), but also because the law [Corporate, or just EK?] says that hardcopy must be provided to anyone who asks, and IME the best e-newsletters (i.e. the ones that *aren't* PDFs) don't look good printed out, and the best print newsletters don't look good in e-mail (see (3) above :-D).
That said, I do agree that a periodical newsletter is not the place for time-critical information, but I believe that it is still a viable medium for feature articles, artwork and the like. Further, I believe that it's not enough to say "print newsletters are obsolete," because information technology is changing rapidly enough that any other medium we choose is on its way to obsolescence, as well (Case in point: at an Ostgardr Commons last spring, someone said to hudebnik "You know, nobodylooks at the website anymore--why don't you create a Facebook group?"+). I suspect that the solution is (as someone here suggested) to have an Information Officer who is flexible and willing to Web, blog, tweet or [Next Big Thing] the information the populace wants/needs. ____________ *Maybe also Webmaster, now that one can use WYSIWYG webpage software
+hudebnik replied, "Because I'm not on Facebook" :->
Another Chronicler Weighs In...
I've been a local newsletter editor approximately since I moved to the East (16 years, give or take 6 months). Frankly, Chronicler* is the only Scadian office I'm interested in holding because
(1) I can aggregate info about Actual Period Stuff(tm)--museum exhibits, concerts, plays--as well as Scadian info (admittedly, there are only a few locations in the U.S. where I could do this--NYC, DC, Boston, maybe Bay Area);
(2) I can provide an outlet for the creative work of local cooks, poets etc. (I am fortunate to have several talented and generous writers in the Province);
(3) I derive some aesthetic satisfaction from producing an attractively-laid-out publication.
Sadly, the rules and regs coming down from the Corporate level (wrt photo/article release forms, "advertising" anything that charges admission, etc.) are making the job less fun, and that, if anything, may eventually convince me to quit :-/
A propos not much, I have never published an electronic newsletter, partly because I don't have coding chops (although I know enough HTML now that I could do what I wanted to do with that and some boilerplate code), but also because the law [Corporate, or just EK?] says that hardcopy must be provided to anyone who asks, and IME the best e-newsletters (i.e. the ones that *aren't* PDFs) don't look good printed out, and the best print newsletters don't look good in e-mail (see (3) above :-D).
That said, I do agree that a periodical newsletter is not the place for time-critical information, but I believe that it is still a viable medium for feature articles, artwork and the like. Further, I believe that it's not enough to say "print newsletters are obsolete," because information technology is changing rapidly enough that any other medium we choose is on its way to obsolescence, as well (Case in point: at an Ostgardr Commons last spring, someone said to
____________
*Maybe also Webmaster, now that one can use WYSIWYG webpage software
+