Newsletter Guidelines
The Communications Working Group would love to hear from you and your congregation/ministry! Send us your submissions (written in the third person) to newsletter@diocal.org.
On December 4, 2018 we launched a brand-new newsletter and content strategy for the Diocese of California. Please read below to see how we now share your content and the requested submission guidelines, organized by the four types of content we typically receive. As always, please write according to our House Style Guide
Story
DioCal News is for you — and by you — the congregations and ministries of the Diocese of California.
Has your ministry or church recently held an event or reached a milestone? Have you just celebrated the ministry of a new rector or vicar? How is your church or ministry engaged in the five principles of the Beloved Community?
Submit your story (written in the third person) and once approved, we will edit and post it to our website News Section. We will also run a photo, caption, and link to the story in the “In the News” section in the next newsletter with space available. Please submit at least one high resolution photo (1500 pixels wide or larger) with your story.
Photo
We love sharing photos of you and your congregation in action!
Submit your high resolution (580 pixels wide by 400 pixels hight) photo(s), a brief caption written in third person (1-2 sentences), and the name of the photographer to newsletter@diocal.org to run in the ” In the News” section of the newsletter! We will also post accepted photos and captions to our three social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Is everyone in your photo either over the age of 18 or do you have a signed permission form from their guardian? If no to both, then we cannot run the photo.
Resource
Did you launch a new resource for ministry that you’d like your neighbor churches to know about and use? Send it to newsletter@diocal.org and we will run in the “Resource of the Week” section of the newsletter on a week there is availability and will post to our Facebook and Twitter accounts!
Event
Is there an event you want to invite folks across the Diocese to? Send it to newsletter@diocal.org and we will publish your event to the online Diocesan Calendar and run it in the list of upcoming events in our weekly newsletter from six weeks before until the event has passed. The first week it runs we will note that it’s a “new” event to the list. We will also run the event on our Facebook and Twitter platforms. If you have a facebook event link, please invite that in your submission, and we can link it in on our Facebook event page list.
New to the new newsletter: We will not run your full ad in the newsletter, but it will be listed in full on the website Diocesan Calendar and linked for multiple weeks in the newsletter. This also means there is no longer a limit to how many events you can submit per week! Feel free to send as many events as you’d like listed on our Diocesan Calendar!
If you submit multiple events, do not submit as a list (our past practice). Instead, please submit full ads for each event.
Guidelines (copy paste the below templated text and fill in with your event’s information):
Title (include name of church and city)
Please write a descriptive paragraph about your event. Preferably no more than 5 sentences. Of course, now with the new format of going onto the DioCalendar, we will not limit your word count.
When*: Sunday, Month 9, 12:30 p.m. (can just list start time OR list the range: 12:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.)
Where*: Church name, street address, city
Cost: free, sliding scale, or ticket price: $25 (general); $15 (student); Free (ages X and under)
Contact: Contact person’s name, email address (we encourage using office lines instead of cell phone numbers if you must list a phone number. Phone numbers are completely optional for contact info)
Link*: Link to event page on church’s website or Facebook event, or general church website address
*Must-have info. Everything else is optional.
Please be sure to submit an event image, according to these guidelines:
- Image copyright: Do you have permission to use the image/photo you’re providing? It may be copyright infringement to use an image from the Internet. A free stock image site we recommend is Unsplash, which does not require permissions or credit lines: https://unsplash.com/
- Our website calendar requires square-cropped photos. If you can crop it, great! The Working Group is also happy to crop it for you.
- Minors in image. If there are people under the age of 18, do you have a release from their guardian to use their photo? Please indicate when you submit a photo with a minor from your congregation or ministry.
For all four types of submission:
Inclusion of submissions is at the discretion of the Communications Working Group. The deadline for submission is Sunday, 5 p.m.; please email to newsletter@diocal.org.
Note: The diocesan newsletter does not run the weeks of Christmas and New Year’s and on weeks where there is a Monday holiday, the newsletter will be published on Wednesday. Please keep in mind when scheduling your submissions.