How to Think of Ideas for Neighborhood Newsletter Stories

You don't just want to run board minutes and a homeowner's association balance sheet in your neighborhood newsletter. But where are the ideas? Nothing ever seems to happen around your area. Wrong! Every place has many, many stories to tell. You just need to know where to look.

Instructions

1. What does your neighborhood newsletter do better than any other publication in the world? Write stories about your neighborhood. With that kind of focus, ideas will begin appearing everywhere you look. Where to start? What do you and your neighbors talk about when you chat? Those topics might just make great newsletter stories.

2. Go to your neighborhood meetings. Usually the most contentious issues end up there, or at least someone there has heard about what's happening that people are interested in hearing more about. The people at these meetings also usually are the ones most involved in the neighborhood, so start asking them what they are hearing about on their blocks.

3. Political/public issues are constantly swirling around us, just waiting for someone to take a fresh look. Sometimes seemingly disparate issues can be quite interesting when put together. In other words, what happens when you think about this with that in mind and then apply it to your neighborhood.

4. Consider local issues in a larger context. Is there something happening in your neighborhood that becomes really interesting when put into context of things happening nationally?

5. Consider national issues in a local context. Is there something happening in the nation that becomes really interesting when put into the context of your neighborhood?

6. Read a lot, and read everything. All of the newspapers and magazines and Web sites of the world have to fill up their space daily, so think about what other people are writing, and see if that sparks any topics for you.

Tips & Warnings

• Get help. The more people and ideas you have involved with the publication, the better it will be.

• Don't raise your threshold too high. Neighborhood newsletters should be about your readers, and if they want to know who's visiting the Smiths from Arkansas this month, tell them. That's really the kind of information that people turn to newsletter to find.