I'm working on changing the look of our news letter and the contents as well. Our's looks like a simple 2 page , written on a type writer affair. We do have wonderful computers now that could do so much better. Pictures would be a first in our 27 years.
There are alot of changes going on in our organization. I want to show members the changes and try to attract them back as well as use it to attract new "blood".
Anyone willing to share information or better yet copies of thiers would be welcomed and hopefully used for improvement.
I'm looking to create something informative almost to the point of being a sales tools as well. Something we can be proud of. Right now it's best used as a litter box liner.
Thank you in advance.
p.s. I will use someone else to proof my horrible spelling and grammer for a more profesional look and feel as well.

Hi Jack - Bob Crowley at NHVRR recently overhauled their newsletter, and has also done some fine work on their marketing and community interaction. Might find one of his posts here and zap him a line.

dave

Hi Jack, Please check out the newsletters of the WW&F Railway in Maine. I believe that they post it on their website as well. I have been a life member there for many years. The newsletter has photos and keeps all of the members informed on their progress. It seems to work well to bring out donations from the members, especially those of us who live too far away to visit on a regular basis. I have never seen a group that has done so much with their donations. The group has really grown and is a first class operation in progress!!!

Jack,

I am also interested in the subject and as I work in a museum library, I get to see a number of these titles.

I suggest you look at the Dispatch from Steashore Trolley Museum and the Trolley Fare from the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum Not on their web sites; but I am sure a phone call will get you a sample copy.

Railway Museum Quarterly is another good one, copies from the Assoc of Railway Museums and parts of older issures are available on their web site.

The New York Museum of Transportation in Rush has a nice product and they have their back issues on line in color. See below.

Some of the museums are putting their products on line and this allows the use of color pictures. Try for example the Ohio Railroad Museum.

for some of the best museum scholarship and good writing, I suggest the Milepost from the Friends of the railroad Museum of Pennslyvania. Their publication is first rate.

Ted Miles

Jack,
Post your address and I (and others) would be happy to send you our newsletters. We use our as a recruitment tool and as a way to attraction to ourselves.

You're right; computers have made it ridiculously easy to do a quality newsletter. I do have suggestion. The cheapest way to print is using a newspaper press. Work with your local paper and see if they would do the newsletter for you. We do our newsletter 4 times a year and print 5,000 to 6,000 at a time. We use the newsletter at trade shows; put them in motel rooms, etc.

Another hint. For our Polar Express, we work with the local paper. They produce a song book of Christmas Carols. The book has advertisement in it from local merchants. The paper over prints thousands of the song books for us. Before every train goes out, there are two song books on every seat.

On the way back from the North Pole, we use the song book to sing Christmas Carols. It is a win-win-win situation. The local merchants appreciate the support. (And realize that the railroad is financially important to the community. ) The newspaper makes money on a special section. And the railroad has song books as a souvenir for every customer that did not cost us a penny.

Mark,

good suggestion about the holiday publication.

I see that your site is going to be added to the list of National Historic Landmarks.

That shows once again the quaility of your site. It is too bad that you are so far out in the middle of nowhere though!

Ted Miles

The WW&F does not put newsletters online, but we do an update of news and goings-on on the website every quarter.

Fair warning: I am quite biased, but I do believe we put out a great newsletter.

However, I am looking forward to the day when we can put out a little color booklet like the Ffestiniog or Welsh Highlands do every quarter.

Its the middle of no where that saved the site. If it was close to a major city, there would be a Wal*Mart on it.

Hi Jack:

The Minnesota Streetcar Museum has two forms of communication to our members. The excellent history magazine called the Minnegazette (jointly published with the Minnesota Transportation Museum) editted by Aaron Isaacs and a monthly (mostly) newsletter called the Streetcar Currents.

The Streetcar Currents is published to provide more time sensitive news and other info pertaining to administration or operations. To get an idea of what this looks like go to our website http://www.trolleyride.org click on the "MSM learn more about us" button on the top left, then click on the "news" link. There you'll find back issues of the Streetcar Currents and photo supplements going as far back as 2003.

The Streetcar Currents is produced using Microsoft Publisher. It's not fancy but it does get the word out. I am the editor of the Streetcar Currents and do about 70% of the composing and all of the production. Major input is provided by our Senior Superintendent, Louis Hoffman and Rod Eaton, our Museum's General Superintendent.

After it's final, the Streetcar Currents is converted to a PDF file and then e-mailed to all Museum members who have e-mail capability. That saves us printing and postage costs. About 60% of our roughly 210 members receive their copy that way. The remainder get their black-on-white printed copy in the mail.

IMHO, the monthly/quarterly newsletter is the "tie that binds" and is absolutely essential to a vibrant organization.

If you have any questions about production of our newsletter please send me an e-mail. I'll be happy to do what I can to assist you.

Anyone wishing to send one can send it to; I.R.S.S. Attn Jack
P.O. box 1310
Lorain,Ohio
44035
Thanks

Thanks for the compliment, Dave. *blush*

The major bit of advice I might give is to get hold of a copy of the Microsoft Publisher application (or something very like it), and learn to use it well. Ordinary word processors are fine, but they lack the control necessary to format a newsletter properly. Applications like Publisher will happily export the final work to a PDF format. That can be handled by your local printing company to produce the printed version of the newsletter, and can easily be posted to a website or attached to an email for electronic publishing.

A consistent editorial policy is also important when it comes to content. Some newsletters publish only information about the organization, and that means the editor must spend some time gathering stories from and about the members. Other newsletters, like the Tarheel Telegrapher I edit, do a mix of organizational information and hard news stories, and those editors must be prepared to search as many railroad news sources, unsually on the Internet, as possible to find stories. I try to keep any hard news stories to those involving railroads in our state, but often find something just worthwhile sharing for its content as important information, relevance to our organizational mission, or simply for being humorous.

Check out the Fair Use Doctrine of publishing under US law to help determine parts of your policy. Firstly, understand I am NOT a lawyer, and anything I say here should never be construed as a legal opinion, but in general, you may have the ability to use news stories taken directly from news sources under certain conditions. Again in general, as long as your newsletter is not sold commercially, and is provided only as part of a membership in your organization, you may be able to use those stories as long as you quote them verbaitim and give full attribution to the source. Remember, this is a generalization, and you should familiarize yourself with the specifics of the law.

The real key here is to make your newsletter interesting to YOU as the editor, as a person, as a member of the organization, and as a railfan. If you enjoy what you write, chances are most others in your group will as well. Then just have fun with it! After all, that is why we do all this in the first place, right?

Jack, in any newsletter be sure to keep the latest news and notices of events and any calendar right up front where they can be found easily. I get newsletters from several groups where I am a member, and they bury their activities back on page 28. It gets really irritating to have to search a newsletter from cover to cover every month to find out what activities are planned.

MX (not my real name)

Congrats on making the move to upgrade your newsletter. A lot of great suggestions have already been given. Here's some free advice I can offer as a professional:

- First, get quality software for creating and publishing your newsletter. Word processors (MS Word, WordPerfect, etc.) are great for beating out the basic copy (text) of your newsletter, but are usually pretty lousy for layout control when you want to arrange pictures, text, and other elements on a page. However, you don't need to go all out. Quark Xpress is arguably the top-of-the-line application out there, but you probably don't need that much power, and I'm sure there are more sensible ways to spend $800. Adobe InDesign is becoming a close competitor, and you can get the application by itself, or in a bundle with other applications like Photoshop and Illustrator. (Creative Suite 2 is the latest bundle, I believe.) Maybe you could get the local computer or office store to donate a software package. If you're looking for training on using the software, the Adobe products have available their "Classroom in a Book" series. I taught college graphics courses using these books for over 3 years and they are very good at teaching the basic operation of all the functions in an application.

- When you start putting pictures into your newsletter, make sure they are clear and easy to look at. Even low-end digital cameras provide enough resolution (detail) for a simple newsletter. If you are saving money by printing the newsletter in black and white, make sure you convert your digital images to grayscale (black & white) and adjust brightness and contrast in a simple photo editing application. They will look much better in the final product. Try to learn as much as you can about your photo editing software as you can. If you can, get a hold of software such as Adobe Photoshop Elements, which has the bare necessities for image processing for a low price.

- Always try to use the highest quality file format for any kind of element used. For instance, a railroad logo could be provided in any one of a few dozen file formats. EPS or PDF would probably be the best choice for a logo, while GIF or JPG might be the last choice. Avoid using any graphics that you took from a web page. The resolution of a web page is not sufficient for high-quality output on paper.

- Use a font and a size that is easily read by your audience. There is nothing wrong with using the default "12 point Times New Roman". Headline fonts may be different since they are usually larger, but limit the number of different font you use. Just because your computer has 1,001 fonts doesn't mean you should use them all. (Or even half of them... or even a quarter of them.. or even...) The rule of thumb is to use no more than 2 (or at most 3) different fonts in an entire publication, not counting the masthead (if your newletter has one.)

- If calculating a new Form 4 is starting to sound like an easier task, I'm sure there is a "young gun" volunteer in your organization or in your area that would love to tackle this project. High school Seniors and young college students who are planning a career in graphic design can always use opportunities to practice their skills, expand their portfolio, and gain the experience. Maybe all you need to do is provide them with the resources, the articles and other content, and throw in a few free tickets to ride the train with their friends, or maybe (if appropriate) a cab ride here and there.

Anyone with a non-profit looking to buy software should check out http://www.techsoup.org. Qualified organizations (i.e., a non-profit that regusters with TechSoup) can buy computer stuff at steep discounts. For example, the above mentioned Adobe Creative Suite 2 Premium is $140.00 at TechSoup.

I send out a small monthly newsletter for a 501(c)3 organization. We mail about 80 newsletters each month. We send our newsletter First Class mail since it serves as legal notice for meeting dates and elections.

I have found Netpost to be a reasonably priced and very convenient means of producing the newsletter. Netpost is a subcontracted service of the U.S. Postal Service.

http://www.usps.com/netpost/welcome.htm

To use Netpost, you upload a mailing list, which is reusable and modifiable online. You then upload your newsletter, which can be in Word, Postscript, PDF or other form. You get to see an online image of your mailing and approve it. Netpost reproduces the newsletter and mails it.

The cost is higher than copying at Kinko's, but you get a break on the postage. Using bulk rate mailing is an option if your newsletter meets the normal bulk rate criteria.