Local Journal
What happened to the Oakington & Westwick Newsletter?
The Local Journal website was being developed to enable a wide variety of community groups and charities across a range of locations to submit information about their news and events which could then be published in village newsletters.
The primary user of the website was myself, as editor/producer of the Oakington & Westwick Community Newsletter. It was hoped that people wanting to share information with the Community would log-in and post their items, to help save time and keep the workload of producing the Newsletter within reason. However, this didn't really happen, and it became impossible for me to keep things going single-handedly.
Once the Newsletter was no longer being produced, and I was no longer adding items to the website that were being sent in by email or on a scraps of paper, it soon became pretty obvious that apart from one regular online contributor, I was the only person adding anything and there seemed little point keeping it going.
New Newsletter?
There are a number of people who are keen to get a newsletter in Oakington going again, including the Community Association and the Parish Council, and one or two people have talked about volunteering to take it on and so there is a possibility that something might get going again in the New Year.
For me, one of the most time-consuming jobs was having to re-format everything that was sent in, and I still believe that a standardised, web-based process for submitting news and events would help save time. I know that not everybody is comfortable using websites, and a significant proportion of the Newsletter's primary audience might not have access to the Internet or even a computer.
More volunteers!
One easy answer to the issue above would be for someone to volunteer to process submissions from people who do not have Internet access - take emails and paper submissions and submit them online on their behalf using a form.
It would be useful for someone to be in charge of arranging the collection of the newsletters and distribution to the deliverers, and to be responsible for co-ordinating deliveries and arranging things as and when the volunteer deliverers are away, or retire. Most of the time this would require a couple of hours a month to collate issues into bundles and drop them off to a dozen or so residences across the village. No computer or Internet required!
It would also be useful if someone could take charge of advertising. This would normally involve dealing with occasional enquiries by email, and keeping a scheduled list. Most of the ads are renewed annually and the rest of the year there might be one or two enquiries a month.
One thing that I never found time to do was regularly contact the member groups of the Community Association, and other organisations, (School, Churches, WI, etc), to keep the flow of information on news and events coming in. Not a technically demanding job but it would need someone with plenty of time. Email would be an advantage with this one, but is probably not essential if someone with email volunteered to assist.
Page layout and printing
Taking the words and pictures and creating a document that can be sent to the printers is probably the most technical job. I once worked at Radio Times where a day was the normal amount of time to produce a 2-page spread. The newsletter is equivalent to 6 spreads, or about a week's work. Obviously it's a village newsletter and not a national magazine so there are not the same pressures or production standards, but even slapping it together can easily take 4 hours to 8 hours.
A new editor
The first thing that needs to happen in order for a new Newsletter to get going is for someone to volunteer to be the editor, in the sense of being the person in charge. I'm happy for people to contact me if they have any questions about how things have been done in the past or how they might be done in future, or to indicate a willingness to help.
Meanwhile, the metaphorical baton is on the ground and won't go anywhere until someone picks it up.
Contact: Mat Barnett mat@oakington.org.uk
[ 17-Nov-2011 ]