22-04-2008
Maurie Abbott (right) thanks Mark for his presentation.
(Note the absence of a cheque.)
RDU Associate Editor Mark Wallace came to the Club to speak about RDU. The opportunity was scheduled for April - Magazine Month. Parts of Mark's presentation appear below:
- Thanks for having me.
- As President of Crows Nest, I have to say I’m impressed by the meals that you get. I was chatting to a Chatswood Club member one year, and he said that he had had the worst Rotary meal he’d ever had at our Club. When I asked him when that was, I had to tell him that things had gone downhill since then.
- Well, April is magazine month. I’ve been working for RDU since May last year, but no-one told me about April. I’ve spoken at so many clubs.
- I’ve been in newspapers for 30-plus years. I started about 3 months after the Granville train disaster. I did some ambulance-chasing for a while, then was transferred to Canberra to cover politics. I spent 20 years in Canberra.
- The task at RDU was to bring my journalistic skills to the job, as well as looking to run things one day when Bob Aitken retires, if we can get him to retire. Bob has been mentoring me, and he’s been a great mentor. RDU means a lot to Bob; he sees it as much more than just a magazine. It’s a medium for the news, yes, but much more than that.
- I’ve asked myself, “What is it that we do?” Well, we help Rotarians in any way we can.
- In the world-wide Rotary magazine scene, Bob is a very big wig. RDU became the first licensed regional magazine. There are now 32. We serve Australia, New Zealand, and Pacific islands. There are about 34,000 Rotarians in Australia, about 9,000 to 10,000 in New Zealand, and less than a thousand in the Pacific islands. When we get an article from the Pacific islands, Bob and I [are ecstatic].
- There are 1200 Rotary clubs in Australia alone. Each rightly thinks it has great projects and great causes, but we can’t run all of the submissions that we get.
- We’ve been running Rotarian Life for 3½ to 4 years now. I love the idea and the content, but I would prefer to see it as an insert that you could pull out. We’ve surveyed twice in 3 years, and the bulk of the readership love it.
- If you have a time-critical story to tell, make sure you have the copy to us at the latest in the first week of the month before the issue. Our first culling process is to work out what’s time-critical, and has to go in the next edition if we’re ever going to use it.
- We prefer submission by email. But, after you’ve emailed us, ring us up to check that we’ve got it. Sometimes emails do go astray. And remember that we do get inundated with submissions. Even if we can’t run it, we can point you in the direction of your local newspaper, as they always want local content.
- RDU Supplies was sold after tender. It was sold to Barry Antees, who then had to resign as General Manager. He’s taken all of the staff to new premises.
- You currently pay about $24 per year for RDU.
- We are in competition with The Rotarian but we sometimes run content from them. Every month we get a list of required articles from Evanston which we must run. An example is the Rotary International President’s message. We also sometimes run content from other regional magazines, and we’re always getting requests from the other regionals for our content. The editors of the regional magazines work pretty closely together, and meet annually.
- How to prepare copy for RDU.
- Articles should be about 200-300 words in the first instance. If more is required, we will ask for it.
- Don’t embed your photos in your article. Send them as separate attachments.
- Make sure your photos are original high-resolution shots.
- And no group shots from the other side of the room with a cheque in the middle. We like head shots, so a cheque held up next to a big smile is a better picture.
- I’ll pass around 3 magazines from different years, so that you can see the changes that we’ve made over time. We’ve taken it from an internal newsletter to be a magazine not just for Rotarians, but also with appeal to those who mix with Rotarians.
- We hired a graphic designer to help take us from the 1960’s to the 21st century.
- We want more advertising in the magazine. A full-page, colour ad from a non-Rotarian costs about $3,600. We have 2 full-time ad reps, and also use commissioned ad consultants.
- One of the things that I have been charged with is improving the website – http://www.rotarydownunder.com.au – which contains RDU archives going back to the 1980’s. The Rotarnet site - http://rotarnet.com.au/ - will be beefed up this week.
- The picture for the front cover is a toss up between the best story and the best photograph. The picture on this month’s edition is from Gawler. They had some very good pictures, so Bob and I said, “yes, that’s it”. Gawler had a lot of amazing machines at their event, and to make it carbon-neutral, they had to plant 8,000 trees, but they did that.
- The image on the front cover is very important because we feel the need to grab people. We need to show that Rotarians are out there, in the community, doing things and having fun doing them.
- I’ll leave some business cards. I’m only too happy to give advice on getting content published.
Last changed: 03:21:37 04-10-2008