Canon Patrick writes…
At the time of writing, I am concerned that the next edition of the Parish Magazine (October 2026) might be the last edition. This is because the double whammy of the withdrawal of MS support for Microsoft Publisher software and that Derek Bush will be unavailable to produce any further editions. We are all very grateful for Derek’s contribution.
It would be ideal if someone would step forward, prepared to edit the magazine on a voluntary basis. This is a significant voluntary role of perhaps four days a month, and more initially. However it is also a great service to the community, and a wonderful way for a newly retired person to build up links with different groups and organisations in the community. I am keen to hear from anyone who might be interested. However, we have been asking about this for several months now, and it does not look as though we will find a volunteer. We therefore need to look at other possible ways forward.
The PCC has discussed employing a person to edit the parish magazine. The difficulty is that it would push up the magazine’s costs significantly without adding any income. The PCC runs the magazine on the basis that it more or less breaks even, but with a professional editor unsustainable losses would seem inevitable.
I want to investigate email distribution systems such as Mailchimp, to see if they could be used to distribute the information that is currently in the parish magazine. This would still be a significant thing to administer, but much simpler than the parish magazine. Former magazine contributors would need to take responsibility for getting their content online, but we would circulate a brief introduction and a link. People would need to join a distribution list, so some of the benefits of universal circulation would be lost. I’m mindful that older people much prefer a hard copy magazine to an email, but actually younger people usually prefer to read things online.
And the way to really engage with younger people would be to move over to a social media format like Facebook, Instagram or TikTok. This is outside of my comfort zone, but I realise that we need to look at it.
I hope to be able to outline clearer plans in the October edition.