Lots of sub-units of large organizations try to create newsletters. I am thinking of things at the scale of a university department or faculty. My experience with these is that they start out with a great fanfare, and the first two-three issues, produced as glossy printouts or pdf files, look fantastic and are full of interesting articles. However, after that, production tails off; people have already disburdened themselves of things that they want to write, and the overworked administrator who has taken on the job of producing the newsletter has other important things to do.
One problem is that these newsletters are fairly unfocused in their audience; are they for the consumption of that sub-unit internally, or are they meant to be for a wider audience. This is often unclear. In many cases, a news stream or blog (perhaps different ones for different audiences) might be better; but, again, it still needs to be used and to have some sense of audience.
Something that worked very well, though, was what I think of as the “shoddy newsletter” for internal communication. When I was a Head of School, I would keep a text file at hand, and update it with ideas that I was thinking about, things that I wanted feedback on, and snippets from emails that I had received from elsewhere in the University or outside. This would then get emailed to staff as an “update” every week. I found this effective; basically, people were kept in the loop without being burdened with lots of emails being sent out. If I were to do this again, I’d probably do one for students, too.
