Further Resources

CONTENT FOR PUBLISHING

WHAT CAN YOU PUBLISH IN A COMMUNITY MAGAZINE?

Now that we understand what a true community magazine is we need to consider what material we can publish in our own community magazine.

We need to obtain a regular supply of original content that will sustain our community magazine over the coming months and provide lasting interest to our magazines readers and ensure that they will want to obtain every issue of our community magazine as they are published.

To maintain lasting interest in our community magazine there are several areas of interest that we can incorporate each month:

Local History Studies
Personal Memories and Recollections
Archive Photographs
School and Group Photographs
Past News Items

A combination of the above categories will ensure wide appeal throughout your local community and will enable you to publish a community magazine that your readers will be willing to purchase from you. We will take a look at these categories in greater detail later, but first here's a brief glimpse of what is on offer to you.

LOCAL HISTORY STUDIES

Unless you are a local historian yourself or able to devote the time and energy required to compile your own articles, this is an area where you will probably require some assistance. Surprisingly. it is generally relatively easy to make contact with people within your own community whose interests lie in the study of your towns local history. Quite often they will have ready prepared articles which may or may not have been previously published but which you can use to great advantage in your own community magazine.

Local history studies on their own, if published at all, are generally done so in very limited quantities - often a dozen or so copies - which are distributed around local libraries and similar establishments. Rarely are such studies of local history made available in large quantities.

For the most part, many local history studies remain available only within your town library, tucked away in the local history section where they are destined to remain undiscovered.

So we must begin by contacting the author of all the local history studies available and ask for permission to reproduce any articles that you deem suitable for publishing in your community magazine. You should be able to obtain contact details from the staff at your local library.

While a book concentrating on a specific area of local historical interest may not appear to have widespread appeal you will be amazed how much easier it becomes for your readers to gain an interest once these long and often intensely detailed studies are published in monthly installments.

PERSONAL MEMORIES AND RECOLLECTIONS

One of the most important aspects of your magazine will be the publication of personal memories and recollections of your town and they are guaranteed to keep your readers coming back for more. Begin by asking round your immediate family and urging your relatives to write about what it was like when they were younger.

The scope for personal recollections is immense and whole stories can be compiled from a single recollection and prepared for publishing in your community magazine. Once you begin publishing these recollections it will be only a matter of time before your readers commence submitting their own recollections for publication too.

ARCHIVE PHOTOGRAPHS

Nothing captures the imagination better than a good, clear, photograph and fortunately there are hundreds of photographs waiting for you to publish in your own community magazine.

The most obvious photographs will be local views of the town but while they will prove to be immensely popular, by far the most popular photographic subject will be school and sports group photographs. I noticed a marked increase in circulation of my own community magazines as soon as I began to introduce full-page images of local school group photographs and many of your readers will have examples of such images that you will be able to use.

PAST NEWS ITEMS

A subject that many local newspapers have implemented over recent years is a look back at events from the towns history as recorded in the pages of the local press. Generally they feature articles looking back at how the town was, or the main events from 25 or 50 years ago.

This is also something you can use to your advantage in your own magazine and many copies of old newspapers are made available through your local library services. These are generally available on microfiche film and all you require is a nice word to your friendly newspaper editor for permission to reproduce extracts within your own community magazine. I discovered the editor of my local newspaper to be more than happy for me to reproduce articles from previous editions so long as the source of each article was credited.

I tend to feature one complete year in each issue, often continuing into the following months issue if any years proved to have a great deal of interest and many worthwhile stories.

SUMMING UP

The above subject areas will form the backbone of your community magazine but there are many other topics you could include to lend your magazine a more contemporary feel in an attempt to attract readers from the younger generations whose interest in our local history has yet to develop.

We will look at all these areas in greater detail soon.

Michael Norfolk