At the Grassroots...Creating and Making the Most of Newsletters
By Tim Byers, Outreach Specialist, UW-Stevens Point Extension, WI Center for EE
The Environmental Education Advocate - Fall 1998
The following information is provided to you as a service of the National
Environmental Education Advancement Project (NEEAP). We encourage you to use it and
please credit the National Environmental Education
Advancement Project where appropriate.
Newsletters can be aimed at internal or external audiences. Internal newsletters usually report on employees, trends in the field, upcoming events, personnel changes, and policy announcements. Newsletters aimed at external audiences or members of an organization (or both) usually contain items about political trends that could affect the organization or field of interest, announcements of new programs and policies, and human interest stories. These newsletters should give the basic facts and indicate who its readers can contact for more details.
Newsletter writing style needs to be punchy. Sentences should be short and direct. Writing should be authoritative and no-nonsense in tone, from a busy writer to a busy reader. Topics should cover news that appeals to a wide variety of readers. In short, a good newsletter is focussed, lively, dependable and trustworthy.
Design with style
Styles can be described as elegant, fun, corporate, etc. Whatever the style that suits your organization, remember that it needs to be easy to read and has to lead the reader through a sequence of articles. Consistency in format and standardized details are also important for two reasons: 1) the reader will get comfortable with your style and will come to expect it, and 2) design decisions need to be made only once.
Be Concise
The aim of every newsletter is news! Make sure that you provide the most important information in a timely manner. Newsletters are powerful when they provide information quickly and directly. If the newsletter is packed with too much information/art/borders/etc., the readers will be overwhelmed and will probably not read it. So, get into the story, tell the story, and get out of the story with a minimum of fuss and bother.
Components
The Nameplate is the first thing a reader should notice when picking up your newsletter. A good one instantly links your reader with your organization and puts them in a receptive frame of mind for your message. It needs to be attractive and effective. If you have a logo, incorporate it into the nameplate, together they set the scene.
Mastheads are where you put basic information about your newsletter: volume and issue number, name and address, names of editors, officers, and board members, and statements of mission and purpose. Mastheads should be consistent with your overall style to maintain balance.
People like newsletters. They start to treat them like old, welcome friends. The job you do in Makeup will help you create this familiar association. Makeup can be broken into four main areas. News and Features are the meat of the newsletter. Put the most important of these in the first few pages and illustrate with photos and graphics. Opinions and Editorials are usually the province of the Director or Editor; a good space is just inside the front cover (in a box). Recognition is very important. Donors, volunteers, and employees need to be recognized with friendly titles that acknowledge their efforts. Calendars are an excellent way to refer to upcoming events, and can be very effective when teamed with a creative design.
Wrapping It Up
You have text. You have photos. Now it's time for Final Fitting. You will rarely arrive at this point with just the right amount of everything, so you will need to expand or condense as necessary. Do not try to fill white space with unrelated graphics, but instead enlarge existing ones, or take a pull quote out of the body of the text and enlarge into a text box. If there isn't enough room, reduce the size of the graphics or edit more aggressively. At some point it will all come together and your extra effort will result in a tight, harmonious newsletter that meets your readers' needs.
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