39 Newsletter summary

Assignment #2 will be to write a newsletter summary. Newsletters often abbreviate versions of articles written in other periodicals. Since space is at a premium in newsletters, the design and content of summaries is very important. You need to say what the original article said in about one-third the space , so you need to pick only the most important information. Summaries don’t have the luxury of using colorful language or long descriptive details. You need to look for the basic facts only.

I would like you to find an original article in a newspaper or magazine. Then I would like you to submit a summary of that article to Clinton Times, the CCC newsletter (you will really be submitting it to me, but let’s pretend it is being submitted for publication). You need to choose a full-length article, not a list of information. In your summary, you are putting the most important info from the article into a list. Also, make sure you pick a topic that will be of interest to the college community and one that they will actively respond to, not just read.

In the introduction to your newsletter summary, state the article’s topic and the original source, including author, title and date. Then, you need to use some kind of tabulated list (bullets, dashes, numbers) to highlight the five or six most important points that came from the article. A brief conclusion, emphasizing the importance of this information, may also be beneficial.

The following is an example of a newsletter summary. Also, look for some newsletters in the community to identify the use of content and design.

Now go to the next module, Writing the Newsletter Summary, to create the assignment. Remember to send it to me as an attachment, preferably an RTF document.