Tips for Newsletter Editors
Worksheet for Preparing a Plan for Your Newsletter

Sections of the Information Plan

Overview

Analysis

1. Report of the needs analysis
2. Goals

Plans

3. Form
4. Function
5. Guidelines

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Overview

An executive summary that explains the need for the newsletter and provides a brief summary of the plans (such as frequency and focus) in 1 to 3 newsletter-length paragraphs.

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Report of the Needs Analysis

Provides the following information:

• Background: a 1-3 paragraph background describing the organization requesting the newsletter.
• Business need, which describes how the newsletter is supposed to assist the organization in generating revenue, containing expenses, or complying with regulations.
• Audience, which describes the primary and secondary audiences for the newsletter. In addition to providing demographic data, provide brief character sketches of 2 or 3 people in the primary audience, to give "faces" to the demographics.
• Purpose, which explains the type of content that the newsletter is intended to share. More specifically, what types of messages does the organization want to get across? What information would readers find valuable? Are these the same? If not, how will you reconcile the differences?
• Content generally falls into these categories:
• Educate, or raise readers' consciousness about issues or provides tips and techniques for performing certain tasks.
• Inform, or raise readers' awareness of the events and issues in the organization
• Connect, or connect readers to other readers, other members of the organization, and to the leadership of the organization.
• Project constraints, which describes the issues facing the project. These include:
• Preferences, that is traditions or the characteristics that the organization prefers
• Editorial, which identifies concerns about editorial policy and guidelines
• Schedule, including frequency of publication, expected publication date within the publishing cycle, and dependencies of other events on the newsletter (such as, the newsletter must be mailed by such and such a date to make sure that the monthly meeting is publicized)
• Budget, specifying the relative budget (low, medium, or high budget)
• Staffing, including staff available and the commitments they have outside of the newsletter. For example, most internal staff for a newsletter have other job commitments and the newsletter is often a secondary commitment.
• Other, such as production constraints
• Organizational culture, identifying issues about the organizational culture that affect its communication with the intended readers (such as an ongoing positive relationship or a history of clashes), maturity in project management style (structured or not, prone to last minute changes or not), and cultural icons and terms that might be included in the newsletter to better connect with readers

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Goals

Goals: broad statements of intent and that provide focus to a project. Each newsletter should have 2 types of goals:

• Business goals, which state, as specifically possible, how the newsletter should benefit the organization by generating revenue (often an indirect link, such as providing ongoing contact with customers), contain expenses (often indirect, too) or comply with regulations. Business goals help align the communication effort with organizational goals.
• Content goals, which state the types of content that the newsletter must address. These include (these should be identical to the content issues raised in the previous section):
• Educate, such as tips and techniques articles, background pieces, verviews of issues, and other "educational" pieces
• Inform, such as announcements, news briefs, and events calendars
• Connect, through profiles of people, news about individuals, interactive columns (such as responding to a situation, replying to polls, and sending letters to the editor)
• Evaluation, in which you assess the effectiveness of the newsletter and readers' satisfaction with it. Usually handled in a survey. Some of the issues to include:
• Overall satisfaction (rate 1 to 5)
• Overall satisfaction (in a word)
• How easily could readers find information (rate 1-5)
• Usefulness of the newsletter (rate 1 to 5)
• What’s read/what’s ignored (list regular features in the newsletter and ask readers how frequently they read the section)
• What’s best about the newsletter
• If readers could change 1 thing, what would it be?

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Medium

1. Choose:
• Print
• Online
• Dual
• Coordinated, in which the printed and online versions of the newsletter related to, but do not duplicate, one another. For example, some organizations publish a brief printed newsletter that "teases" readers into checking the online newsletter
• Duplicated, in which the online and print newsletters are duplicates or near duplicates of one another and neither has much significant new content

Explain why you made the choice you did.

2. Consider these issues when making the choice:
• How accessible is an online newsletter to the intended readers? Do they have easy access to computers? Is it in an environment that is conducive to reading?
• "Eye time," that is, how easily can you expect readers to surf to the website? If they will not easily surf there, how can you lure people there?
• If you provide a newsletter online that's free to everyone, will members who are paying for the newsletter consider this a devaluation of their membership benefits?

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Function

Provide the following:

• General design, which are sample page designs for the following:

4-page printed newsletter	8-page printed newsletter	Online newsletter
Page 1 (make sure that you include the name plate, an "inside box" (which directs readers to content inside the newsletter), the lead article (the most important one--if it's about an event, it should always focus on an upcoming one rather than a past one), and any other elements which you would like to include on the first page) Page 2 (masthead, which lists the staff of the newsletter, name and contact information of the publishing organization, instructions on how to submit articles and advertise, and any important elements of editorial policy, as well as an editorial or letter from the leader of the organization Page 3 (in-depth feature, columnist, or news item) Page 4 (include the return address for the organization, space for mailing label, postal permit (if your organization has one), calendar or a similar box with notices (if any)) All pages: running header and footer	Page 1 (make sure that you include the name plate, an "inside box" (which directs readers to content inside the newsletter), the lead article (the most important one--if it's about an event, it should always focus on something upcoming rather than something just past), and any other elements which you would like to include on the first page) Page 2 (masthead, which lists the staff of the newsletter, name and contact information of the publishing organization, instructions on how to submit articles and advertise, and any important elements of editorial policy, as well as an editorial or letter from the leader of the organization) Page 3 (in-depth feature, columnist, or news item) Pages 4 and 5 (centerfold, second most important article) Pages 6 and 7 (more in-depth features, columnists, or news items) Page 8 (include the return address for the organization, space for mailing label, postal permit (if your organization has one), calendar or a similar box with notices (if any)) All pages: running header and footer	Home page (make sure that you include a the name plate, an "inside box" (which directs readers to all of the content inside the newsletter), and any other elements which you would like to include on the first page) About Us page (masthead, which lists the staff of the newsletter, name and contact information of the publishing organization, instructions on how to submit articles and advertise, and any important elements of editorial policy) Lead story (which focuses on a key issue facing the organization or an upcoming event) Columnists, member interviews, and other regular features Calendar of upcoming events or a similar box with notices (if any))

• Long term editorial calendar--which lists the specific articles to be published in each issue. Types of articles include:
• Feature articles: list suggested topics and lengths for feature articles (changing articles) (a feature is an in-depth article).
• Regular features: list the topics of news you intend to cover in each issue (such as tips and techniques for using MS Word, or grammar tips); also list length.
• Columns: lists the names, topics, and lengths of regular columnists (such as Ann Landers). If necessary, also list their frequency (some columns might not run in every issue).
• Others: list other items that might regularly appear in the newsletter, such as cartoons and photo displays.
• Short term editorial calendar, which lists the content of the next issue. This part of the information plan changes with each issue; other parts should not. Provide a page-by-page description of content. For each page, identify:
• Article topic
• Writer
• Word length
• Graphics needed (such as photos or drawings)

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Guidelines

Product guidelines include:

• Editorial policies, which address
• What will you publish? What won't you publish?
• What form must it be in?
• Who approves content?
• Editorial guidelines, which state how you intend to maintain editorial and visual consistency in the publication. Editorial guidelines are not the same as editorial policy. Components of an editorial policy are:
• Templates for material that is identical, or nearly identical, each month. Templates are like fill-in-the-blank forms, that let you "insert" content where it should appear yet use the same layout in each issue.
• Style guide, such as Chicago Manual of Style (technical), Associated Press or New York Times (more journalistic), or other
• Dictionary: a prescriptive (such as American Heritage Dictionary) or descriptive (such as Webster's)
• Exceptions: spelling, usage, and other stylistic issues that either deviate from the recommendations in the style guide and dictionary, or are not covered by it.
• Technical guidelines, which specify the hardware and software of the system used to prepare the newsletter (called the authoring platform). For hardware, indicate the type of processor, monitor, printer, storage, and memory for the system. For software, indicate the operating system, word processor, authoring tools (if any), graphics tools (if any), and presentation graphics tools (if any).
• Production guidelines, which specify how the finished product will look. For printed materials, includes the quantity to be printed, weight and color of paper, finish of paper (matte or glossy), number of colors of inks, and special instructions (especially needed for graphics and photos).

For online materials, specifies how the newsletter will be shipped (such as by the Internet) and the requirements of the station on which the newsletter will be viewed)

Project guidelines, which state the project management plans. These include:

• Schedule, which indicates the general schedule for each issue as well as specific schedule for the next 2 or 3 issues. Dates to include
1. Calendar approved
2. Assign articles
3. Articles submitted (estimate 8-12 hours per article)
4. Editing complete (estimate 1-2 hours per article)
5. Typesetting and layout (estimate 1-2 hours per page)
6. Proofreading (estimate 1 hour per page)
7. To print (estimate 3-10 working days for printing)
8. From print
9. Mailed (estimate 1 day for handling, 5 days for first class mail, 15 days for bulk rate)
• Budget: items to include:
• Writing and editing: staff or freelance (going rate is $1/word or $35-75/hour)
• Design: initial design of the templates (usually $3-$10K if using a design firm) and production (usually several hundred dollars)
• Printing: varies based on quantity, paper size, quality of paper, number of inks, special printing instructions (like graphics) amount of time available for printing)
• Mailing expenses: postage plus a handling charge on each
• Oversize fees (if applicable)
• Costs of promoting an online newsletter, such as webcards (postcards that invite readers to visit a website) and short newsletters)
• Staff: who’s going to assume each role:
• Editor, who plans the content, assigns articles, and reviews and approves all copy
• Production manager: who handles all layout and production
• Writers: who write the articles
• Proofreader/copyreader: who review copy for editorial consistency and accuracy
• Advertising manager

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