The Flame Philosophy

The Flame serves the Members and Friends of the First Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco who read it. Decisions on what to include in the newsletter are based on whether, in the opinion of the editor, the readers will find the article interesting.

Since its June, 2004 reincarnation with pictures and posting to the web, The Flame's submission guidelines have been posted online.  Please read them when you can -- a major  key to editing The Flame is the assumption that the weekly email newsletter is only a supplement to the comprehensive monthly newsletter. Some people do not get email, and The Flame is not the official communication of the Society.

Although many people are embarrassingly complimentary about The Flame, recently the editor has realized that his admittedly arbitrary standards have seemed to annoy some faithful submitters of material.  Worse, some of those standards were not clearly stated in writing.  While the editor has believed that the standards should be obvious because they are so reasonable, he has agreed to writing down a few more of them and asking the FUUSSF community for comment.


Please read this commentary on The Flame as far as you like, and then leave a comment at the end. Please include your name in your comment, if you want others to know who wrote it.

Focus

The Flame prints articles concerning the activities of the First Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco and its Members and Friends. Events publicized in The Flame should have a direct connection to a FUUSSF organization, be about one of its Members (such as a concert performance), or otherwise have unique appeal to our membership.

Why?  There are so many, many truly good causes in the wider community.  The Flame's editor is in no position to choose among the worthy causes to determine which get publicity and which do not.  So, most worthy or not, stories about our Society and its community members are the ones published.

Ongoing Events and Timing

In general, the articles in the Flame are about events coming up within the 7 days of publication. For major events of the Society, there may be several articles leading up to the event. However, a new story should be written and submitted each week. One tactic to submitting stories is to focus on what's new in the planning or fresh details about the up-coming event.

There are other techniques to publicize a story over many weeks.  Basically, if it isn't worth writing something new each week, why should someone read about it each week?

The Flame tries very, very hard to avoid duplicate articles.  Readers don't find repeats interesting.

Articles are submitted during the week they run. In our community a lot of dates and details change.  In the editor's experience, a two-week old piece of church information has about a 30% of being incorrect.  Speakers get sick, new priorities become more urgent, problems get solved ahead of time, whatever!  So, please! Articles should be written and submitted sometime during the week they are to run.

Corrections 

The Flame will print notices of its errors in the next edition.  When practical, it will also print corrections on the edition posted on the Internet.

Unless the error is severe and likely to cause significant disruption, a correction email will not be sent out.  Why?  Members have said that they do not want too much email.  If we send out several emails a week as corrections come in or plans change, it 1) will take more time and work than imaginable and 2) people will stop reading The Flame.

Tone

Many articles are sent in with notes that people should attend, help out, or, basically do something because it is good for them or good for the world.  This is not likely to be a tone that persuades readers, no matter how noble the cause. 

Write articles focused on the reader!  Tell them what's in the event for them.

This is tricky, I know.  The line between sounding inviting and sounding desperate is not clear.   

Style Sheet Issues

... or things you may not care about but which co-editors might find useful

The editor believes that The Flame is read by many people who do not know all of our Unitarian Universalist shorthand language. To help them decode our writings -- and to show them our secret handshake -- The Flame will make as few assumptions as possible in its stories.

The first time each of the many, many abbreviations used in our community comes up in an article, the full words will be used.  So, you'll see the "Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA)", the "Unitarian Universalist Service Committee  (UUSC)", "Director of Religious Education (DRE)", and so on.  The editor thinks this is helps newer members of our community figure out what's going on.  Spelling things out often helps the editor, too.

In this vein, we also do reminder links to organizations like the Faithful Fools and the UUA when they are referred to in stories. Just in case a reader passing by doesn't already know about these familiar places, we want to provide a non-intrusive introduction. 

The name of the organization we serve is "The First Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco".  It's shortened form is "Society". The Society has church services and a church, but people join the "Society".  "Society", "Members", "Congregation", "Membership" are all capitalized when they are used in reference to the First Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco. Except, of course, when these words follow a possessive ("our society") -- this is meant to be similar the capitalization rules for "Mother", "Father", etc.

The editor also believes that it's easier for people to read things that are written in a consistent voice. The Flame uses "we" and "you" when necessary, but "we" generally is used for the whole community and not one of the Society's groups.  So, "we" invite you to a church-wide event like the Holiday Faire while the Dachshund Lovers Committee (it) invites you to their wiener roast.

Our stories are accompanied by pictures which are generally 125 pixels wide and aligned to the left.

We have no good style yet for when we spell out numbers and when we use the numerals.  The editor thought the breaking point should be something like 25, but that's looking old fashioned.

Alternate Communication Venues and Expansion

The Flame is just one method of communication for the Society. The Society has an official monthly newsletter.  It also has an official website.  The Flame tries to support those other communications channels and complement them.

The Flame is also trying out a web log and thinks a online discussion group might be a good idea, too.

Volunteers to help edit The Flame, or to coordinate a blog or online discussion group are invited to contact the The Flame's editor to brainstorm!

Your Comments on The Flame philosophy?

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