The Great International Newsletter Project !

[mouser]

This weekend kicks off the first Great International Newsletter Project.

What is it?
In celebration of traditional communities brought together by the printing press, the Great International Newsletter Project is an effort to encourage people to make contact with their neighbors by creating an actual printed newsletter.


How do you participate?
Simply put, create a new newsletter this weekend:

• Do you live in a school dorm? Start a newsletter for your hallway, your floor, or your building.
• Do you live in a condo? Start a newsletter for your apartment building.
• Do you live in a big family? Start a newsletter with family news and gossip.
• Do you have a favorite band no one has ever heard about? Start a fanzine newsletter about them.
• Do you have strange political or philosophical views? Start a newsletter about it.
• Do you live in a small town or a small neighborhood? Start a newsletter about it.

It doesn't have to be anything fancy -- a double sided single sheet of paper would be fine for your first issue.  Use a newspaper front page as your model -- make sure you have headlines, bylines, a title and a date.  Put your address and email on it somewhere so people can write to you to subscribe.  But it *must* be distributed in printed form to qualify!


Get it out there!
The only qualification for a "successful" newsletter is one that gets printed and shared.  If you have friends already who want to help, great -- but if you don't then let people know on the newsletter how to get involved.


I hope you'll join in on this cool project, help us spread the news, and best of all let us know about your newsletter!  Post a scan and tell us how we can request an issue.
-mouser

[housetier]

In my club we already have a printed newsletter. It contains stories from the club's blog and sometimes featured articles. It's published irregularly, about every 6 weeks.

People love it, even though most of the readers already know part of the stories: they are the ones who posted the blog entry or engaged in a dedicated discussion on the mailing list. It is very good for letting "outsiders" know about our club, because it is something tangible they can take home and read later.

Recently we offered subscriptions too. For a yearly fee you will will get all issues by snail mail as soon as the ink is dry. If memory serves me right, five people signed up for the subscription.

[Lashiec]

Duh, housetier post reminded me about the newsletter that the association I belong to issues in a yearly basis . It's pretty simple, and just highlights the events of the year, along with various articles of interest often accompanied by some drawings by the president of the association. It might be difficult to post a scanned copy though.

[Deozaan]

Then I'd have to pay even more for printer inks. :-(