Newsletter Committee Report

Betty Allen and Lana Craig

March 10, 2006

 

 paper newsletter was developed by Betty Allen at the beginning of the school year.  Edamerica printed and mailed these to all counselors in Tennessee.  A list of names was gathered from the state and TSCA to hopefully include everyone.  However, after mailing the newsletter we heard of a few that were not on the list.  Nicole Cobb is planning to supply us with the Counselor Institute Registration list so we can develop a more accurate list for next year.

 In January Betty started gathering submissions for the electronic newsletter and had it compiled by the beginning of February.  With the list of emails we have there was no way to enter all and send the email easily.  Each one would have had to been sent separately.  Thanks to Jeffrey Freiden! He created a link on the website to view the newsletter and sent a reminder to all TCA members.

 The April email will go out through the TSCA website just as it did in February.  Remind TSCA members that the deadline for submissions to the April newsletter is April 6.

 Currently, there are no specific guidelines; therefore, this is the problem Betty had.  She had to work many hours trying to make things work.  Whoever does the newsletter needs to know the capacity of the email system or know the best program to use to create the newsletter.  Betty learned the hard way that Microsoft Publisher is not the best way.  She did the last one in Word and it worked ok.  Most everyone sends articles in Word.  If you use some remote program to create the newsletter, you cannot copy or download the articles sent to you; you have to retype them or have the sender change the format.  It creates a lot of problems.  I think doing the newsletter in Word is the best bet. 

 For the future we believe that electronic is the best and cheapest way to send out our newsletter.  Possibly check with Jeffrey to see if posting it on the TSCA website is a permanent way to do this.  It seems to work well.

 Betty only had one person request a hard copy of the newsletter because they did not have access to the web.