At 01:14 PM 9/28/01 -0500, JNiolon@uss.com wrote:
>
>OK group,
>
>I've got a very good friend who belongs to a LBC (little British car) club.
>He must have made someone mad for now he is the keeper/publisher of the
>club newsletter.. (that will teach him). He's about 8 months into it and
>is running dry for ideas for articles. The membership is of little to no
>help and I've given him everything I've written or read in the past year.
This is a very tough problem. Is this mostly a local thing with few
members? If so, that is the hardest. These usually don't have a lot
of technical stuff, but are big on the personal and beer bash stuff.
This isn't a bad thing. People like to see their pictures, and names
in the newsletter. So reporting on the last outting does that.
I've been publishing The Brickline, a quarterly magazine for Bricklin
International since Oct 97. I won the "Old Cars Weekly's Golden Quill
Award" last year. Hoping to do the same this year. We have about 350
members, but I can count on 1 hand the number of people that send in
articles.
A couple of thoughts:
1. Have him miss an issue or two. Then tell everyone why - no articles.
2. Cut back the number of issues put out - again tell everyone why - no
articles.
3. Does he subscribe to many news groups? If not, tell him to join several.
They don't have to all be the same type. I belong to Spitfires, Editors,
British cars, Saab, Morgan, Bricklin, Shop-talk and a few others. Problem,
I was getting between 200 and 250 emails a day. But this give you a lot
to draw from. While there are a lot if things specific to a particular
marque, there are a lot of similarities among all cars. So use info
from the various mailing list.
I have a section, "what their up to", which I usually draw from the various
email questions from the Bricklin mailing list. Then as I find good
info on shop-talk, I'll put that in the mag. someplace.
I'm pretty fortunate, in that I am pretty much of a techy and do all
my own work. So I can usually draw from something I'm working on.
I end up writting a technical article every couple of issues. I've
written a 8 page article on rebuilding a tilt wheel steering column,
just did a 6 page article on trouble shooting a non working horn. I'm
currently working on one about sandblasting, based on questions that
have come up here on shop-talk.
4. Have they tried a "tech" weekend? Have the members come over to
someone's house and work on a particular problem or two? This would
make a nice article. You can cover both the tech stuff that was done
and also the beer bash side.
5. Have him take a look at my Morgan web page: www.team.net/www/morgan
under the Restoration/Tech section. I have several articles titled
"An electrical Primer". I also have numerious other general articles
and a bunch that are specific to the Morgans. If he sees anything
that is interesting - that I wrote, tell him he is free to use it.
I only ask, is that he at least tell me that he is going to use an
article, if I give any credits in the article, they MUST go with
the article, and if possible, I'd like a copy of the newsletter.
Good luck. Hope things pick up for him.
John
John T. Blair WA4OHZ email: jblair@exis.net
Va. Beach, Va Phone: (757) 495-8229
48 TR1800 48 #4 Midget 65 Morgan 4/4 Series V
75 Bricklin SV1 77 Spitfire 71 Saab Sonett III
65 Rambler Classic
Morgan: www.team.net/www/morgan
Bricklin: www.bricklin.org
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