Newsletter

A newsletter is a type of publication produced most often by public relations practitioners. Almost all organizations—nonprofit and profit-making alike—create and distribute newsletters to members of their key audiences. With the development of desktop publishing, newsletters have grown in popularity. Although they share similar traits with magazines and newspapers, newsletters are smaller, less formal publications that are directed toward a specific audience, such as employees, customers, members of the community, donors, or volunteers. Although newsletters fall under the realm of public relations tactics, they existed long before the birth of the practice. In 200 B.C.E., the Han dynasty in China published a daily newsletter. Many historians consider newsletters to be the forerunners of the modern newspaper. In fact, one of the first successful publications in America was called the Boston News-Letter.

To be successful, newsletters must have a narrow and clearly defined target audience and a specific objective, such as strengthening ties with volunteers, educating the community about local programs of interest to them, encouraging donors to keep giving money and resources to a nonprofit organization, and informing employees about company policies. Internal company newsletters are quite common and are called house organs. They are used to build employee morale, promote teamwork, recognize outstanding achievement, and instill company pride.

Effective newsletters must have an overall key message that is communicated throughout each issue. For instance, a school district distributes a newsletter to parents of the children enrolled in the school. The key message is that if parents get involved in their children's education, their children will become more successful in their studies, and the objective is to encourage parents to help their children with their nightly homework and take an interest in their children's learning. Appropriate stories in such a newsletter would be articles on strategies to help children with their homework, tips on getting kids motivated to do their homework, easyto-understand statistics on how helping children with their studies improves performance, a list of free or low-cost tutoring services for parents unable to help their kids, and a profile of an actual student whose performance increased with his parents' attention. Although stories may vary from issue to issue, newsletters carry the same overall theme in each issue, and the style and layout remain consistent.

Newsletters are distributed to a specific target audience on a recurring basis. Many appear quarterly, and some are distributed weekly or monthly. Few are distributed biannually or yearly because frequency helps build the relationship between sender and recipient. Although few in number, some short-term newsletters may be distributed daily. For instance, booth sponsors in a trade show might receive a brief newsletter each day of the show, which keeps them up to date on the show's happenings.

No matter what the frequency of distribution, newsletter stories are typically short, informal news and feature stories, although newsletters will also include sidebars; a limited amount of calendar information; news briefs; letters to the editor; and bulleted information about programs, activities, or employee updates. Most newsletters are four to eight pages in 8½ × 11–inch format, although they can be larger or smaller—one page to larger, multipage documents.

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