A New Team for the Magazine

Earlier this year Frances Murton announced she wishes to retire as editor of the Prestbury Parish Magazine after 13 years. Being a good editor, Frances has kept alert to what has been going on in the parish and has asked many people to write a little something about those events. She has also asked for contributions to some regular series. Over those 13 years the appearance of the magazine has improved tremendously with the advance of technology. New, more powerful computers and the latest word processing software have enabled better layout. With the advent of digital cameras we now enjoy photographs in each edition, and with the arrival of a colour copier we can have some of the pages in colour. We cannot expect any one person to take on the full role that Frances undertook so we are hoping to establish a team of people in which each person takes on one role.

The Contributors

These are all of you. You have been providing the raw material for a long time. Please keep it coming and pass your contributions to your ....

Local Hunter-Gatherer Editors

We are looking for one of these in each of our major congregations. Your job is to receive the articles (copy) from the contributors. When there is something that should be reported make sure someone (else) is writing about it. You might need to go back to the contributors and suggest changes.

Often you will just have to accept what articles you get but some months you may wish to concentrate on some particular theme or topic of interest. Sometimes you need to prepare for the occasions in the church year. The Hunter-Gatherer Editors (HGEs) are in control of the magazine and may like to meet at intervals to make plans.

Between you, you are the copy editors; you are not concerned with making the articles look pretty. You get good copy and pass it on in a computer file to ....

The Approver

This is a job for one of our clergy. He is looking out for blasphemies, heresies and libellous comments as well as checking the correctness of the content as best he is able. He accepts responsibility for the articles being published in the parish magazine. The accepted articles are sent to ....

The Publishers

There are three publications: the website ; the weekly pewsheet; and the monthly magazine. Hence there are at least three publishers. You each receive the good articles and prepare them for your respective medium and publish them. The website publisher can place the articles on the website immediately. The others publish all you have room for. Sometimes articles may need to be held over for lack of space or you make use of space fillers.

The monthly magazine publisher will enjoy working at a computer using modern software. A 'house style' will need to be evolved and used repeatedly. The articles are laid out in pages in a manner which is pleasing to the eye and such that the regular articles can be found in the usual place each month. You are the layout editor. We fully realise you will need plenty of help and teaching at first. Don't worry! The good news is Frances is prepared to help for a few months. The finished magazine is emailed to the Team Office for ....

The Printers

This is an established team who look after the machine while the magazines are printed.

Advertising Manager

At present there are 7 pages of advertisements in the printed magazine. These provide useful income. We need one or two people to deal with the advertisers. You will answer enquiries, send invoices, receive payments and accept artwork of the adverts. You will need to enjoy using a graphics editor as the artwork needs to be converted into jpeg files of the correct dimensions so they can be placed easily in the page (most adverts run for several years so this part of the job is not onerous). The jpegs are sent to the Publisher.

Front Cover Editor

The front cover is usually a photograph with the magazine title and date superimposed. It would be most helpful if this were a full-page jpeg file which the publisher can just slot in as the first page. Here is a job for someone who enjoys using a graphics editor. The HGEs may suggest the subject for the cover picture or may provide a picture.

and finally ...

We don't expect you to be experts straight away! Help will be provided. All of you will need a reliable computer and a good internet connection. Most of all you need a willingness to learn and be part of a team.