Chapter13: Producing Newsletters and Brochures

This chapter of Public Relations Writing & Media Techniques provides us with information about the production of newsletters and brochures because they are tools that companies use to inform employees and external audiences about important information happening with the organization that may or may not affect them.

Editing a sponsored publication has been described as something pf a high-wire act because it must be produced to advance and promote managements organizational objectives and simultaneously provide information that isn’t boring to the audience. Mission statements are essential to any newsletter and brochure. These are about 25 words and cover the publication’s general content, its audience, and its strategic role.

Newsletters, essentially, are messages from the organization to various publics who want the news and information. Magazines are usually a bit more detailed in their presentations.

It is important to use catchy leads for all articles in the newsletter and magazine. Bill Sweetland, writing for Ragan.com, believes that leads should do one or more of the following:

• Establish suspense by sparking curiosity
• Tell a story with strong human interest
• Avoid abstraction and vague, general terms, buzzwords, and clichés
• Establish the possibility of conflict or drama
• Use narrative to draw readers into the rest of the story
• Answer the what, why, when, where, who, and how with imagination
• Quickly establish the idea or them that the writer wants to convey

You should always plan your brochure before you write for it. Writing requires research and the putting the information together. From here, you should focus on the format, paper, fonts and ink and color.

Desktop publishing is now widely used for preparing newsletters, magazines, and brochures. This requires the preparation of extensive electronic files that show the links between copy, graphics, photo, headlines, and layouts.  

Sources:

1. http://www.amazon.com/Public-Relations-Writing-Media-Techniques/dp/020541849X

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