GOOD WRITING

Try Starting Your Own Writing Newsletter

You do have the time and your staff is dying for feedback

I was typing my umpteenth companywide e-mail on yet another abuse of style last November when I realized enough was enough. I had kicked around for years the idea of starting a writing newsletter. Now, as my newspaper's in-house writing coach, the time had come.

We named it Wordsmith. It has proved to be one of the best things we've ever done for ourselves.

Several months and editions later, our staff and writers, editors and coaches on four continents, hungry for help with the writing craft, have welcomed it warmly.

If there's a lesson to be learned from our experience, it's that anyone can imitate what we've done.

Helping hands

Before we launched the project, I canvassed newsletter editors I know and respected friends in the industry, and all said one thing: Do it.

That was all it took. I already had a strong sense of potential content: pieces on the craft, on style, grammar, headlines and cliches.

More than one colleague suggested pieces by staffers on how they put their stories together, an idea I incorporated early in planning.

Our design and photo directors quickly agreed to help with design and a standing column each. A staffer consented to write a piece on his standout story on a car insurance scam ring.

Their participation both broadened the newsletter's appeal and gained valuable help in shaping content to meet a number of needs at different stages of the production process. In other words, the more inclusive it became, the better it became.

Using our library database, I spent spare moments through November and December assembling the pieces, and wrote the cover piece in a day. Fellow editors added badly needed polish to my piece, edited copy and proofed pages.

After about 10 total hours of design and two sets of proofs, we ran it through our pagination system and produced a positive image. I delivered them to the printer the next day. The 300 copies of our 10-page debut cost just over $200.

The response was overwhelmingly positive. Writers and editors alike were grateful that someone had gone to such trouble to encourage good writing.

I was grateful I was able to make a dream reality, and that I could deliver a message of quality to staffers working miles apart on a number of shifts and separate offices.

I also mailed copies for review to other coaches. They unanimously gave us high praise.

The highlight came when two-time Pulitzer winner Jon Franklin, who moderates the WRITER-L Internet forum on literary journalism, gave Wordsmith a plug. We were inundated with requests.

Simple lessons

On our first edition, we had become a huge success. The experience remains both exhilarating and humbling, and compounds our commitment to maintain quality.

This is what we've learned:

As the Nike commercial says, just do it. All it took to get started was my resolve to change the status quo. If I couldn't get help with layout, I would do it myself. And if the boss wouldn't pay for the printing, well, there's always the copy machine.
Writers everywhere are starved for feedback. If any one thing counts for our success, that's it. I knew from workshops that writers love it when you pay attention to them and their craft. What surprised me was how much professionals long for tools that will help them improve.
It doesn't take much. All you need is desire, a commitment to quality, a computer and a printer. You don't need well-connected friends to get the word out, but if you have some, share your work with them. The important thing is to start, to try and make a difference.
It matters little who does the work. You need to know your stuff enough for others to accept what you say, but writers can produce their own if editors won't. At some large metros, a senior writer, not an editor, does the coaching. Most editors think they're too busy. But they're likely to jump in once someone else gets the ball rolling.

So start rolling, and have some fun. Your success may amaze you.

McGrath is writing coach of the Munster (Ind.) Times. E-mail him at mcgrath@howpubs.com.