Ramblings about newslettering

[ziasudra]

skuf has an interesting poll here about fandom newsletters. I read the fill-in answers and the anonymous discussion threads with interest, and noticed that a reoccurring "complaint" seems to be newsletters tend to favor toward certain things, be they genres, pairings, or overall bias in reccing.

This got me thinking — and in fact I've had thoughts about newslettering for a long time now (and was great to get to talk about this with other fellow newsletter editors at r_becca's newsletter roundtable at Phoenix Rising) — why do people assume newsletter editors have the time to read every single fandom LJ account in the intarwebs? I'm glad the daily_snitch is not a rec newsletter, because I simply don't have the time to read all the fics that are posted in a day, never mind sifting through them to select recs. But even doing the meta/news/non-fic links alone, each issue takes me hours do compile. I almost always (barring RL busyness) go out of my way to look for links outside of reading my own flist or the Snitch's watcher journal. But I'm just one person, I can't know that someone who posts about RL stuff 99% of the time just happens to post something fannish and linkable today, and oops I missed it but instead linked to posts by "popular" LJers or slashers.

I've said this before, and would probably say it again in the future: if you see something that might be of interest, e-mail the links/recs/suggestions to the appropriate newsletter! Seriously, newsletter editors don't bite. In fact, every single one of them that I've met has been of the nicest group of HP fans I've had the pleasure to get to know.

</rant> (not directed against anyone in particular; in fact, I'm feeling more amused than annoyed)

Comments

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the only fandom newsletters I know well is SGA which is indeed pretty clear on its policies. As for metafandom: it's really that random! Depending on time of day and who's memoried, things will go in and others won't. But these days, a lot of the links get linked in, so we're not just dependent on our flists any more (which it really all it was there...interesting discussions in fandom that we happened to come across) <- and now make all that past tense since Im' not affiliated any more :)

[ratcreature]

What you call "random" is easily perceived as cliquish though, which I think is problematic once a fandom resource has grown beyond a certain size. I mean, I can understand reluctance to ask a newsletter that is just people collecting things from their f-list to link to things, because it feels even more like begging than when your post falls into clearly delineated parameters of a newsletter and the editors just missed it for whatever reason.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

Oh no, makes perfect sense.

I just don't know how metafandom *could* establish a comprehensive policy...we take from the meta section of other newsletters if it isn't too fandom specific, we LJ seek for meta...it's impossible to read every LJ and there *is* no community... [plus, I think by the end, we were getting pretty comprehensive, even reading "just" from our flists, simply b/c people who do meta ended up reading the newsletter or were on our flists...]

[ziasudra-fic.livejournal.com]

I think the randomness issue is always going to be there as long as newsletters are around. As I mentioned in a comment above, once in a while I'd find a post via friends of friends' list. And when I first started newslettering, I in fact did read several people's fof lists every week (back when I was a student and had time...). But I soon came to realize why there was a reason editors used a set watcher journal for compiling links -- there really are only a set number of people who post essays and metas on a regular basis (my newsletter is news and meta-based). The 50 or so other journals I added to my personal watch list tend to have posted one very interesting fandom-related entry (which caused me to add them in the first place) but never again, and many of those journals have since become inactive, heavily RL or other-fandom oriented, or friends-only.

It's the self-perpetuating cycle of venturing "out" for more links, finding nothing, and then going back to relying on a set list of journals for links until I feel the need to venture out again. I'm still looking for a balance -- I checked out a bunch of LJs after meeting new people at Phoenix Rising, but even though the journal owners are definitely fans, they rarely post linkable entries -- and haven't really found a cure-all solution that would cover all the people's complaints.

And I freely admit I miss things all the time. Sometimes I'd send an "oops, I'd meant to link to this but I forgot" email to my fellow editors after I'd posted, and other times I wouldn't come across whatever I missed until months later, when all I could do then is headdesk to myself.

[ratcreature]

Heh, I guess it would be useful for newsletters if people tagged logically before posting and the newsletters could just use the tracking feature. I mean, for example if someone only does really interesting meta every four months, and you were bound to miss it, if they tagged the post "meta" you could just get an email that way. That's what I do to follow infrequently updated stories (as long as the LJ is setup sensibly) if there's a lot of other stuff in the LJ instead of friending it, and I tag my own posts like that too, because I can sometimes go months without posting in a certain fandom, but then start getting into it again, and it's not like I expect people into comics to follow my SGA posts or my pet rat photos or whatever.

[ziasudra-fic.livejournal.com]

Heh, I guess it would be useful for newsletters if people tagged logically before posting and the newsletters could just use the tracking feature.

That would be cool. I've done this before with one journal, but "meta" seems to have a very broad meaning for that person so I just ended up manually checking her LJ every once in a while ;p

But I suppose one bad experience doesn't a bad system make. Thanks for showing me how tag tracking is really supposed to work... I'm going to give it another try with some of the journals of people I've recently met through cons. At least I know for sure they're still in fandom and are enthusiastic enough to pay money to go talk about fannish stuff :)