Gather your content

Note: This content is mainly relevant people working on advanced print publications such as magazines. Skim read only if you are working on a simpler projectsuch as a poster.

There are two basic ways to generate content: solicit it from others, or write it from within your production team – usually a bit of both.

Gathering quality and relevant content from the grassroots is one of the most important and difficult jobs, and often the most neglected. Rather than speaking on behalf of people, community media should allow people to speak for themselves whenever possible. It is also good to include “expert” contributions to frame and clarify issues. Your own editorial team can also contribute.

To gather contributions and avoid writing it all yourselves, you will need to:

• have a plan with clear deadlines and responsibilities
• develop and sometimes train contacts who have an ear to the ground and can write, or are willing to learn
• provide a clear brief including length and purpose and useful editorial guidelines
• be clear about, and follow-up on, deadlines in time
• manage a respectful and skillful editing process.

Don’t miss the story

Always take a digital camera with you to actions and events. Make sure that you are recording and filing minutes of meetings, reports of trips and delegations, self-evaluations of actions, summaries of research projects.

Be on the look-out for material that communicates the core of your work. If you are doing this regularly, it will be easy to fill your publication with relevant and timely material. Build documentation into the day-to-day culture of your organisation.

You can also explore the habit of audio documentation, which can later be transcribed.

Your community must be encouraged to suggest stories to you (and even write them or provide good draft material), but you can ask for what you want to – calling out for coverage of important issues and events. Brainstorming sessions will bring out ideas for the type of stories and items that will be relevant to your goals and audience. Make sure you have a balance of “soft” and “hard”, factual and opinion, human experience and statistics as relevant.