We would appreciate some bullet points to [help us make our employee newsletter more interesting]. Please don't tell us to run around to find out who had the latest baby or prostate surgery.

By Henry Ruddle on Jul 13, 2010 | In Writing/Editing FAQ, Content

--Carol Medusky

Carol -- It's great that you wrote prostate instead of prostrate. It's amazing how many professional journalists call that little gland by the wrong name. Call the Columbia Journalism Review! The routine human resources stuff you have now is OK. Keep that. Do not succumb to the temptation to print pithy quotes ("There is no try. There is only do or do not." -- Yoda, the Jedi master). Unless extremely relevant, quotes aren't very interesting to most people and sound preachy. The easiest way to create interesting, relevant articles for an employee newsletter is to include a feedback form. It can be of the "What surgeries have you had recently?" variety, but survey questions make more interesting reading. "Do you think the cancellation of Murder She Wrote was the fault of CBS or Angela Landsbury?" "What is your favorite variety of music?" "On a scale from one to five, please rate the following news anchors." and so on. You don't have to run around at all... and sorting through survey forms can be quite entertaining.

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