Re: Newletter

[Erik Olson <erik@thekrib.com>]

On Sat, 25 Oct 2003, Susan Welenofsky wrote:

> I would like to second Paul's motion to send the newsletter as a PDF. I
> know that might be a venture into the unknown, but perhaps Erik could
> help us with that. In the long run, it would cut down on costs
> immensely, so that the money could be used for other things.

Since you asked, hmm, historically the main reason against doing that when
I was editing (1996-2000) was that "the technology wasn't so great, it
would involve two lists, a minority of members had e-mail, and it looked
nicer printed". I think we had been talking about html, not PDFs.  The 
GSAS magazine was the only bit of media I had been working that *wasn't* a 
web page, so there were opportunities to do different stylistic things for 
print.

2001-2003 we haven't had a single editor long enough to really get into 
the issue again -- it's nice that this has finally happened!

Certainly from a technology standpoint, we now have PDFs, which look very
nice and can be printed out on people's printers.  The database, which
already has a field for e-mail, could have an extra field for "e-mail
newsletter", so that at the same time labels are generated, an e-mail list
could also be generated for June (thus insuring it actually goes out to
current members).  On the other hand, to make it "as nice" as the
newsletter, you're probably talking at least 5 megabytes per issue --
that's pretty big.  

So the issue you guys will have to grapple with is whether it's worth Bob
and June's time to insure the e-mail addresses work, send out both paper
and electronic copies, and deal with expiring "electronic" members who
don't have a label that tells them this.

I do note, with apologies to Rick, and now strictly as a
board-emeritis-member-observer, that quite a bit of budget (several
hundreds of dollars?) seems to have been going to paper-related expenses
*other* than the newsletter lately, and I wonder, if there is truly enough
shortfall that you guys are worried about the newsletter, that these other
areas should be similarly examined?  (This is the one and only time I will
ever bring this point up.)

  - Erik

PS: I would have no problem receiving an electronic-form newsletter.

-- 
Erik Olson
erik at thekrib dot com

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