Newsletter Writing: Features and Headlines

newsletter cover
Newsletter cover from State University of New York, Potsdam, posted on their web site.

Read for Sept. 16, 2024:—Newsletters are a particular kind of PR periodical, and your text describes many types, from employee newsletters to subscriber-based, special interest newsletters. In the past, newsletters were a key print product that made sense when an organization was communicating with a public that has a high degree of interest in some ongoing topic about the organization.

A public for a newsletter can be small. This is a newsletter Joe writes just for editors of the MMU Times.

There are still printed newsletters, although I think most newsletters these days are circulated via email. Newsletters, in their email form, are still a current valuable PR tool—and depending on who the public is you need to communicate with, printed newsletters can also still make sense.

The writing in newsletters is similar to what appears in an organization or corporate magazine—I will write a lot in this blog post about feature writing because you will write a feature this week. Magazines tend to be longer, with longer stories and more pages, and slicker. They are usually less frequent than a newsletter. An organization may do a weekly newsletter, for example, but a quarterly (once every three months) magazine.

A newsletter is only useful when a public has ongoing information needs about your organization. But that does describe lots of situations—if a business or nonprofit is of anything beyond small size, where all the employees don’t interact with each other directly, an employee newsletter may make sense. A periodical that talks with donors of a nonprofit, faculty at a university, a particular kind of employee (maybe software engineers at Collins Aerospace), parents of students, etc., all make sense. Where there is a public that wants ongoing information, a newsletter may fulfill that information need.

Newsletters, in terms of the style of writing, vary a lot. That’s because they are aimed at different publics, and the writing needs to match the PR needs that the newsletter is designed for. More on that at the end of this post: First, I want to note two forms of writing that newsletters involve:

  • Feature writing—styles that are different from the inverted pyramid, the style used for most news releases.
  • Headline writing—being able to well sum up the main thought of a story in an enticing, accurate sentence.

Features:

Features follow many of the conventions that apply to most PR and media writing: The writing should be precise, concise and compelling. Any PR feature story should be clear on the information that is presented. But unlike an announcement news release that is written in inverted pyramid style, a feature is slightly less direct. It often opens on some compelling action or scene. The first 2-3 paragraphs are usually full of pathos.

And then comes the “nut graf,” the paragraph that sums up the key information in a nutshell.

A feature in a newsletter is often fairly short—maybe 200 to 300 words. Newsletters are part of what is called “controlled media,” which means it it under the control of the organization. Other controlled media, such as an organization magazine or even web site, may have longer feature stories.

Features are also written and sent out as news releases.

Page 8 of 9-15-2022 MMU Times
Page 8 of the Sept. 15, 2022, MMU Times. The "SnapShot" is an example of a personality profile. The "Heard on the Hill" is also a feature example, showing that features can be as much about the visuals as about the text.

There are many common kinds of features in PR, which we will review in lecture, but a few include:

  • Personality profile—An image or set of images are published with a story that helps the reader to meet a person. The “Snapshot” story in each edition of the Mount Mercy Times is an example.
  • Case study—Often used in PR, an example of how a person or organization uses your services. MMU’s web site often features alumni stories—these are partly personality profiles, but are also university case studies. A case study attempts to show how your organization is making a positive difference in some situation.
  • The roundup—A kind of story you may do for the MMU Times. It means taking a big topic and consulting multiples sources. Although it was a “news roundup” and not exactly a feature, the story about the President Biden plan in the Sept. 15, 2022, edition of the MMU Times is a roundup because it covers the same topic using several perspectives. A roundup feature would not typically be so tied to a news event—but, for example, if you interviewed several students and professors, it would be easy to imagine an election roundup or COVID-19 roundup written for the alumni magazine by MMU MarCom. Roundup features are common in PR, often used as news releases.

A feature is still a media piece of writing. It  should reflect clear, sound news sense. While the writing should be bright and creative, it also cannot be fictional—compelling anecdotes or vivid place descriptions all have to be firmly grounded in the bedrock of good, accurate reporting.

Features typically have a different time sense than a straight announcement news release—a feature tends to step back a bit from the day-to-day fire hose of events, and provides more background and context. But the feature topic should still be very newsworthy.

Headlines:

Headline
Page from SUNY newsletter used earlier. Headline on an inside page (not a very good headline, but by definition a headline--why do you think Joe thinks this is not a very good headline?)

As noted in newsletter writing basics, a headline is a truncated sentence that communicates key information. Thus, the words “Media Alert” on your “Media Alert,” although done in a headline style of larger, darker type, is not really a headline, but a label. Labels don’t have to express complete thoughts: They don’t always have both a noun and a verb.

In media terms, if it’s not a sentence, it cannot be a headline. It may be a “Hammer,” which is large words before a story headline, or it could be a “standing head” or “bug” that identifies a particular recurring piece of opinion writing (“letter from the president” in an employee newsletter, for example). Remember that a headline is always a short sentence--truncated merely means some words, such as some articles or conjunctions, are omitted. Headlines are done in "up style," that is, capitalized like book titles, or "down style," which means capitalized as regular sentences are. What style does this blog use for its headings? What style does the MMU Times (and most news media, although not all) use?

And there is no airtight rule that requires every block of words appearing in a newsletter must have a headline.

Newsletters, however, often follow newspaper conventions in terms of layout, and news that is reported in a newsletter usually does have a headline. A headline should:

  • Be concise, but include all relevant facts. It is a truncated sentence, yet still a complete sentence.
  • Have key details that apply to what is new in this particular story. “School Board Meets Tuesday” is possibly correct, as a headline, but terribly bland. “New Middle School Plan to get Board Vote Tuesday” would be much better (assuming it is true). (And if you thought the headline in the sample newsletter headline shown above is too bland, that's exactly what Joe was thinking.)
  • Be completely accurate. We are used to clickbait headings, and deceiving headlines. Since PR is all about trust and relationships, do not fall into that trap.
Sept 15 2022 image of MMU Times
Front page of the Sept. 15, 2022, MMU Times. Note headlines, story on the right has a "hammer" (label" that is followed by the headline, the story about the chaplain has a more traditional headline, note use of quote (colon to attribute, single quote marks). The I in "it's" should be capitalized.

 Other notes on newsletters:

A newsletter is a “periodical” because it’s an ongoing PR publication published on a regular basis. It can be weekly, monthly, quarterly—it all depends on the public, the needs and the resources available. It generally is an email with an attractive, colorful look, including images and probably video—but can be a paper publication, either instead or also.

On paper, newsletters traditionally have a logo or flag, a front page with one or two main stories, and additional pages. The pages size is usually 8 ½ by 11, but can be double sized and folded into pages. It tends to use some newspaper conventions—stories are “modular,” that is arranged in discrete rectangles, most stories will have a headline, photographs will have captions that are called “cutlines” in the newspaper world, etc.

MMU Times newsletter
Preliminary design for newsletter the MMU Times will use this year to let the campus know when new stories have been posted--a sample of a newsletter designed both for printing and email distribution.

MMU newsletter
Sept. 18, 2023--example of MMU email newsletter.

Newsletters have a long tradition. They have  morphed into a primarily electronic tool—many today are available via email and/or posted on the web. An official organizational blog can be considered a kind of electronic newsletter; a corporate blog may serve some of the same purposes as a newsletter, for instance. Some writers will keep in touch with key audiences by having personal electronic newsletters (I receive a newsletter from Lyz Lenz, a nationally prominent nonfiction author who lives in Cedar Rapids, called “Men Yell at Me.”)

One reason a PR writer needs extensive Mount Mercy Times experience is to gain valuable practice in the style of media writing used in many newsletters. 

Terms to know this week:

  • Newsletter
  • Controlled Media.
  • Headline
  • Feature
  • Personality Profile
  • Case Study
  • Roundup
  • Nut graf
  • Periodical



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