Why we should phase out the newsletter
An Opinion

In February, the 150-year-old Rocky Mountain News went out of business. The following month the Seattle Post-Intelligencer – almost as old – closed its doors. Chicago, Detroit, and Honolulu are all two-newspaper towns on the verge of losing one. Nowadays, subscribers in Detroit get a newspaper delivered to their doorsteps two or three times a week, depending on whether you take the Detroit Free Press or the Detroit News.

The culprit is, of course is the Internet, or to be more precise, the almost free access to it. As readership gets older, advertisers understand that the buyers of the world prefer to get their news cheap and quick. There is a new game in town and it is a 21^st Century game.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand why. In fact, it isn’t a stretch to recognize why this applies to our own four-times-a-year newsletter.

The advantages:

• Timing. Information can be put on www.billslake.net at any time. If there is, say, a need to inform folks of a lost boat tarp or a loose boat that has drifted onto your lakefront area, notice can be almost instantly posted (both of these things have happened). Pictures and the story of the St. Patrick’s Day deer rescue were placed the next day. Virtually every hard copy of the newsletter in recent years has been preceded by its posting on our Web site many times weeks in advance of publication.

• Space: Anybody who has visited www.billslake.net instantly realizes that far more information and photograph can be placed there than on a conventional printed newsletter. For instance, pictures of every boat participating in the Fourth of July parade were exhibited. The hard copy of the newsletter contained only the winner. Articles about lake testing found in recent newsletters are brief (believe it or not), compared to the information found on the Web site. Links can (and have been provided) to relevant articles found in, say, the Grand Rapids Press.

• Versatility: If there is an error on the Web page, it can be almost instantly corrected. If there is an omission, the situation can be rectified quickly. If somebody supplies a better picture or a timely article, it can be placed almost immediately. But once the newsletter comes out of the copy machine at Newaygo Printing, it is a done deal. Changes and corrections would mean reprinting which would mean money.

• Cost: Last year, the Bills Lake Association paid Newaygo Printing a bit over $300 ($310.25, to be precise) to publish four newsletters. In stark contrast, we paid nine dollars for the entire year to place stuff on the Internet service. Actually, this was simply the cost of Web site name – www.billslake.net – which has to be renewed (We do it two years at a time). The cost of the server is free because it is operated by a friend of Ed Waits who refuses to take money for it. But even if he charged, it would be approximately $10 per month. You do the math. In addition, the cost of printing a newsletter in color is prohibitive. On the Internet, it is free.

• Distribution: Sometime prior to Memorial Day, the newsletter is printed. Then Ed Waits goes around to each zone representative and determines which should be snail-mailed and which should be hand-delivered. Those who live year-around at the lake and are here (i.e. back from Florida) get one placed in their doorways. Those who, say, have their primary residence in Grand Rapids get one snail-mailed. The latter makes no sense not only in terms of the timeliness (this newsletter has been posted on our Web site for weeks) but also in terms of the cost of postage. Furthermore, throughout the summer, zone representatives don’t have to get out deliver newsletters. They simply need to remind residents to check the Web site. Dues can be collected at the most opportune time: when Fourth of July flares are sold.

• Presentation and Pagination:  There is much that the newsletter editor can do once he is free of the confines of print journalism. He doesn’t have to worry about the length of articles. He doesn’t have to make things fit into the two or four page format. Articles can be as long or short as he wants. There can be many more pictures. And everything except certain scans can be in color.

Given the advantages, --especially the savings – it is small wonder that even though the newspapers mentioned above are suspending print versions of  their publications, all of them are maintaining their online versions. Why not us?

Reasons to keep printing the newsletter

• We don’t need to save the money. Our treasury is in good shape. At the Labor Day meeting last year, Jerry Deschaine suggested that we entertain a motion to have our treasurer, Jim Tower, assigned to Lansing “to clean up the mess.” Jerry, of course, was premature. A month later, it became increasingly clear that Jim belongs in Washington D.C.

• A good argument can be made that personal distribution by the zone representatives is a good thing. They get into the neighborhoods, meet people, trade gossip, and get a sense of people’s concerns. It is a valuable form of communication, perhaps more valuable than what is presented in written form. It is a truism that more get done in the parking lot after an association meeting than at the actual meeting. Same with neighbor-to-neighbor discussions.

• By far the most important consideration: What about those residents who don’t have a computer and more to the point, have no interest in having one set up for them? Where will they get access to the information?
  

Those who don’t have computers

But it’s a little bit like asking: what about those people who have TVs with rabbit ears? What will they do when all the signals go digital?

When phone lines were established, we connected to them. Some took longer than others. All of us eventually bought the new-fangled contraption called a television.

There is NO doubt that computer usage over the next decade will increase, not decrease. One only has to look at the increase in e-mail addresses that Ed Waits receives each year when he compiles the annual directory.

In other words, how long do we wait before we quit publishing a hard copy of the newsletter? The question resembles recent events. How long do we wait until we pull the plug on over-the-air analog television and force a few people to either get a converter box or subscribe to cable or satellite?  Feb. 17, 2009? June 12, 2009? Next year?  Five years? Ten years?

At some point, it has to happen. It is inevitable. In the early 1950s, some of us remember going up the street to the only home that had television. We kids peered through the window at the wonder. Those who are unwilling or unable to join the 21^st Century can either have a neighbor keep them informed or take a walk up the street.

But the point, given the vast advantages of the Internet, is that we shouldn’t have to go backwards forever. Moreover, an acceptable argument, given recent events, is NOT “But we’ve always done it this way.”

Don’t panic

All of this is intended to plant seeds and promote discussion. It is a nudge. Over the next few years, we can continue to publish a newsletter, perhaps in more abbreviated form. Or zone representatives, who will have been relieved of many of their duties because so much is online, can make sure – in one creative way or another -- that their computer-less neighbors are still informed. 

The title to this article contains the words phase out, not abruptly eliminate. Don’t panic.

Your comments are welcome.