Ten steps to a better bulletin
But, who's counting?
By Reed SampsonSociety PUBLIC RELATIONS MANAGER
- Computer or typewriter? Computer. There are several easy-to-use word processing programs and desktop publishing programs that can help you produce an excellent looking bulletin.
- How many fonts? Three: one for headlines, one for body text and one for captions. Fonts should be clean and easy to read. Headlines should be large and bold. Text size should be the same throughout; use italics for emphasis. Captions, also called cutlines, should be smaller than text point size and bold.
- Headline or title? Headlines are preferred, but many editors don't know the difference. A title would be similar to the name of a novel. Example: Death of a Salesman. A headline is a sentence. Example: Salesman dies. In our barbershop world: Convention News (title) versus Convention produces many great stories (headline). Regular columns in your bulletin can have a title (Ten years ago), but there should be a headline with each article (Jones named chorus director). As a general rule, there is no punctuation in a headline. Only the first word is capitalized in a headline.
- Punctuation & capitalization: Use periods, commas, colons, semi-colons and quotation marks. You'll notice the absence of exclamation points from the list. Let your words put the exclamation point in the sentence. Capitalization is a major bugaboo for editors, and the tendency is to use capitals excessively. Here are some common usages. Capitalize a title before a name but not after. Chapter President Frank Howard, but Frank Howard, chapter president, - The style used in The Harmonizer is to capitalize Society, when referring to the Barbershop Harmony Sociey, capitalize Barbershopper when referring to a Society member, but to not capitalize barbershopping. Each word in a song title is capitalized, including prepositions and articles: "In The Shade Of The Old Apple Tree." Committee names are capitalized: Finance Committee or Nominating Committee.
- Graphics and photos: Photos would be preferred, but not every bulletin editor will have the means to include photos in the bulletin. Graphics (clip art) should suggest what the story is about.
- Cartoons, jokes and humor: There really isn't any need to include cartoons. The best bulletins in the Society never use them. Jokes are not needed either. I once saw a bulletin that had two pages of jokes, the kind that make the rounds forwarded in e-mail, attached to a bulletin. That particular bulletin had about eight pages (printed on one side only) and contained virtually no news of the chapter. And speaking of e-mail, everyone gets those endless, inane list of jokes and lists, and they're stale before you might ever think about publishing them. Humor is a different breed of cat. An actual occurrence, at which everyone in the chapter had a good laugh, would be fine to run. "When the pig squealed during the ballad when we sang at the county fair, it sure was difficult not to crack up. The audience did, but we kept singing." If it ridicules, teases or jibes at an individual member, quartet, officer, etc., don't run it.
- Content: Develop an editorial policy for your bulletin and publicize that policy. Give a copy of it to any of your regular contributors. You, the editor, have the final word on what gets printed in your bulletin. You don't have to run something simply because it is submitted. However, your writers need to know what is expected of them.
Your bulletin is a wonderful handout for guests to take home. They'll show it to their wives, who we know will read it. If your bulletin contains harangues from chapter officers and the director, gripes from the show chairman about ticket and ad sales, section leaders browbeating singers about singing flat/sharp, too loud/soft, what do think the reaction will be from the wives who read it? "You're not going back to that bunch. They can't do anything right." Consider these options. In his piece the director writes, "I don't know what I have to do to get you guys to sing that phrase in tune." That's not very positive, is it? How about this instead? "We've got the words and moves really well in this song, so I want to use our rehearsal of this piece next week to focus on the tuning in the phrase from measure 14 to 18 because it's got some tricky chords." Same desired results, correct a spot where the chorus sings flat, but everyone has been praised for the things they do right and will be ready, with a good attitude, to work on those tricky chords. Chances are the director will have a much easier time fixing the passage.
- Content, Part 2: The style used by USA Today is a good one to emulate: lots of short bursts of news and information that offer the reader several entry points into the publication. A bulletin is a great place to say "Thank you." Use your bulletin to acknowledge the accomplishments of your members, both in barbershopping and in their employment. You can have a regular feature such as "News about members." It could include the spouses and children of your members. "Bill Smith, one of our super low notes, is beaming with pride. His daughter just received an appointment to the Air Force Academy."
If you have a wives auxiliary, give them one column in your bulletin to include news and information each month. If you have a weekly bulletin or info sheet, don't you think a returning guest would like to see his name and the name of the member who invited him?
- The fine art of editing: Nothing, repeat, nothing gets printed without being edited. Edit for style, grammar and punctuation. Then edit for content to be certain the piece conforms to your editorial policy. If it doesn't, you have a choice: make it conform or send it back to be re-written. Editing corrects mistakes. Editing tightens an article so it reads smoothly. Editing may be necessary to shorten an article so it will fit in the bulletin. However, editing does not substitute your preferences in vocabulary for the writer's. Don't change something simply because you would say it differently.
- Look for bulletin material: As the bulletin editor, you are responsible for content and, like it or not, making your publication interesting to your readers. That means you need to look for material to publish rather than waiting for it to "come in over the transom." You can ask for people to give you news, but you need to actively pursue material to publish.
- Proofreading: If you've read this far, you may recall that this piece is called "Ten steps to a better bulletin." So how did number 11 get in here? It is intentionally incorrect to emphasize the importance of proofreading. You can do it, but it is better to have another person proofread your bulletin. Carefully check the spelling of people's names, day/date/times, e-mail addresses and anything with numbers (money, phone numbers, zip codes). Spell check is great, but it won't catch a misused word that is spelled correctly. Here are just two simple examples: there/their/they're and chord/cord.
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