Hi Laura, I finally had some time to sit down and organize the Newspaper stuff. It would be nice if we could meet for couple of hours and discuss all these logistics when you are down here next week. Please let me know when you would have some time. I guess you are kind of free after the Pride Parade on Saturday, right? We could meet then? This is a very long message so I am including a table of contents and a summary/timeline at the end. I put down a number of items that I think should be finalized by the end of this month ... it's at the end under July 28 in the timeline. Could we meet to discuss all those items while you are here? As for getting the paper by the Gathering... hmmm... i don't think it's gonna happen. Wanna come up with a new date? -Karine ======================================================================== TABLE OF CONTENTS: Title Logistics (address and bank account) Coordinators' Duties Website Subscriptions Submissions Budget Content and Topics Timeline / Summary TITLE: I thought about this and I think we should just come up with one. It's better than having a name that changes all the time or trying to get a contest going. A contest would actually be more work and at this point, I would like to cut on the amount of work if possible. In addition, we would need to finalize the title so that I can get a domain name for the website. So, I suggest that we finalize the name by July 28th. Of all the ones we have heard so far, the following are the ones I would prefer: Green Focus, Green Herald, Green Vision, Green Light My favorite is "Green Focus" but if you really want "Green Light", then that's fine. Somehow the "focus" one has more movement for me and it's more goal-oriented; i see it as a focus on issues... my boyfriend likes "Green Herald" best he just told me. LOGISTICS: I can set up a website and email address, but we need a mailing address and a bank account. We need a mailing address for subscriptions and for hardcopy submissions. We need a bank account for online subscriptions via PayPal. Should we get a PO box for the newspaper? Do we want to use an existing Green Party PO box? Do we want to use the Green Party of California address which is in Sacramento or use e.g. the San Diego Greens PO box? One possibility I was thinking about was perhaps to have different addresses for the subscriptions and submissions. That would go along with our duties. So, let's say you handle submissions and they come to Alameda county's address and I handle subscriptions and they come to San Diego address (also see DUTIES). As for the bank account, we need to figure out where we want the online donations/subscriptions to go to. Should they be deposited into the Green Party of California account directly? That probably makes sense. With PayPal, we can request to have all the transaction copies sent to us via email, so we would have a report on the amount of money that was deposited to the GPCA bank account for the newspaper sub-account. GPCA website already has PayPal so there won't be any extra work for this except that we would need to figure out a way of having the newspaper related transactions forwarded to us. DUTIES: We should figure out how we are splitting the coordination of duties. Originally we said Southern vs. Northern california. I think some things could be split geographically but other responsibilities should be split differently. So here's my suggestion -- Let me know what you think: website -- Karine / Kendra submission requests and mailings - Karine volunteers / first contact - Karine editing - Laura / Karine layout - Laura / Russell subscriptions - Karine budget maintenance - Karine production (i.e., printing) - Laura distribution - Karine in Southern / Laura in Northern regions writing - Karine / Laura WEBSITE: I will get the domain name and set up an email address as soon as we have a name for the newspaper. I will talk to Kendra about setting up the website and have a link to it from the front page of cagreens.org site. Our email would be info@greenfocus.org or info@greenlight.org or something like that and it would be forwarded to both of us. Also, I will create a button which will take people to a subscription form. We will ask all locals to put this button on their websites and that way, visitors could automatically subscribe to the newspaper from the websites. We should say something like "the local from whose site the subscription arrives will get 5% of the subscription fee". Hopefully, that would encourage the locals to put up the button! I was thinking that on the website we could include info on how to contact us, submission info, subscription form and info, and also how to submit ads to be placed in the paper & how to pay for it. We will also post couple of the latest articles and maybe with a text from the "editors" describing the goals and content of the newspaper in general. Anything else? Oh yeah, an archive of the newspaper articles. SUBSCRIPTIONS: I am attaching a subscription coupon I made. Let me know what you think. It's just in a Word document for now but we can make it the right size later. As you can see, I put $20 for the subscription because that way it comes down to $5 per issue, which is already steep no? Would you pay $5 for each issue of the GPCA newspaper? I thought $25 was too much but we can discuss that more I guess. Another option by the way would be to give away books (I could get some books at cost) -- like a Ralph Nader Reader for instance. Incidentally, do you know whether we have any T-shirts to give away or whether we should make some (and if so, who would cover the cost for now)? Hey, take a look at our website at http://www.sdgreens.org/resources/promotion.html and go down to "T-shirt designs" to see some designs from my cousin. Anyway, I thought we could make subscription coupons with our mailing address on the other side and give it to locals to use while tabling. What do you think? Let's decide on the subscription info (i.e., address and cost) soon so that we can send it out to the locals. SUBMISSIONS: We need to send a call for submissions out because so far we only have 5 articles I think. We have 3 cartoons. I could also contact a cartoonist I know (Ben Dib) -- oh, I was supposed to send you samples of his work; they are at http://www.sdgreens.org/gallery/cartoons/index.html (these are a bit old though). I think we should also contact Nader and see if he would write an article for our first issue on the whole corporate scandal mess and relate it to California specifically. I hope he accepts because that would be the way to sell our paper -- to get famous writers and politicians as contributors. Should we set up a mini honorarium for famous people? BUDGET: We should probably come up with a preliminary budget soon. After that, whoever is handling the subscriptions could also handle the updates of the budget and report it to ... ?? Who should we report to actually? Is it GROW or Mike Wyman or the GPCA CC? I guess we should figure that out at some point. Things to include in the budget: expenses -- copies and production [$1600 for 25,000], distribution costs [$100 for Oakland delivery, the rest?], merchandise/book costs, cut for subscriptions via locals' websites (5%), percentage taken by PayPal for online donations (about 3%) income -- subscriptions, advertisement Anything else? CONTENT AND TOPICS: Based on the discussion we had in SF... Topics for this issue can include Statewide candidates / issues Spoiler issue / electoral reform Oil and foreign policy Enron and neoliberalism + globalization / corporate abuse (Nader article?) War on terrorism and civil liberties discussion of state propositions and analysis endorsement of propositions Latino vote and Green Party (in spanish) Regular columns: 10 key values (English and Spanish) mail-in coupon [see attached] 2-3 cartoons 4 to 6 photos staff list FAQ Main articles in Spanish Call for submissions Advertisements Letters to the editor TIMELINE AND SUMMARY: (L=Laura and K=Karine) July 24: --------- - find out whether we can have merchadise to give away with subscriptions (L) - finalize title (K&L) July 28: --------- - get domain name and email address (K --> Cameron) - decide on mailing address for subscriptions and submissions (K&L) - decide on the splitting of duties (K&L) - write up text for subscription and submission call (K&L) - decide tasks for the volunteers and write text of message (K&L) - determine criteria for ads we would accept & cost of advertisement (K&L) - send out subscription info to Green Locals -- via Ginny-Marie Case (K) - send out call for submissions to Green Locals - via Ginny-Marie Case (K) - send out volunteer responsibilities (K) August 5: ---------- - create subscription coupon to hand out at tabling events (see attached) - (K) - created subscription form and button for locals' websites (K) - send out call for submissions to local progressive groups and Indymedia (K in San Diego / L in Bay area) August 31: ----------- - set up website (K --> Kendra) - come up with a preliminary budget and submit to Mike Wyman? (K&L) - fax Nader and ask for reprint permission of his articles or a new article for our first issue (K)