Home › Our Committees

Communications Committee

How We Publish the Newsletter

- As a Team, not a Committee - Nan Trout, Editor of the Jackson County DEMOCRATDick Trout, LayoutWayne Slawson, ProofreaderGary Moore, Tech LiaisonAnd a large contingent of topical authorsCONTACT: nantrout@mind.net or 482-9747 At the end of each month Nan and Dick sit down and put together each newsletter;which includes alerts of upcoming meetings from the Executive Committee, reports of activities forwarded by committee chairs, and serendipitous submissions from other Democrats. It’s this last group that creates variety and originality in the newsletter. How you can help, and the skills we can use:

  • Do you like to write? You can create articles about issues important to you.
  • Do you enjoy reading? Want to review current political books?
  • Send us a reports from progressive gatherings  – we all belong to many of them.
  • We also mine the blogoshpere.
  • Are you an editor? There is always room for new blood in creating the newsletter! 

What kind of material are we looking for?

 Local JCDCC news of course – committee reports, project results, etc. Chairs of our various committees are, by definition, occasional contributors. We also turn to our candidates, and to what is current in the political air at the county, state and national level for topics of interest to Democrats. Our goal is to create information in a format that provides background for folks to write Letters to the Editor (LTEs).

 Some Basic Ground rules:

  • The deadline for submissions is usually the 28th of each month. It takes 2 or 3 days to compose and layout each issue and to have it proof-read. I really appreciate folks sending me material a few days prior to the 28th, especially if the work is long. 
  • 550-600 words on a page is standard, although we can fit about 800 words in a pinch. We prefer to stay with a 12 or 11 point type size, because in the print edition these are easiest to read. Larger type is for headlines and meeting announcements. 
  • My job as editor is to make The DEMOCRAT reader friendly: I try to avoid repetitions, clean up usage and punctuation, etc.
  • We make an Adobe Acrobat pdf of the finished issue and – thanks to our committed volunteers at Democratic Headquarters, one of our techies creates the link to the website where everyone can read it and/or print it out themselves. In addition we print a small run for our of subscribers who pay $12.00 a month to get it by snailmail. The office volunteers prepare that mailing.

Who gets the DEMOCRAT?All Precinct Persons, members of the central committee, other active Democrats who have added their names to our e-mailing list, plus anyone who clicks on the newsletter link on this website. We get raves from Democrats in counties all over Oregon!