Foundation

The NAA Foundation focuses on Newspaper In Education, newspaper youth content, scholastic journalism and diversity. In this blog, you'll learn about products, programs and resources that emphasize the use of newspapers and other media by young people. You'll also learn about programs and activities that can help news media companies transform their cultures in order to grow business and increase readership and audience.

E-mail: It’s a Blast

Editor's note: This is the second of three installments from an NAA Foundation interview with Dana Plewka, educational services manager at the Denver Newspaper Agency.

You have a spiffy new Web site, updated a few minutes ago with yesterday's classroom content. How do you get the word out to teachers?

Plewka advocates the use of e-mail blasts, which are sent to large audiences (in this case, an NIE mailing list) on a moment's notice.

Once you educate yourself on how to make your blasts relevant and interesting to teachers, there's no reason not to send them to your audience, Plewka says. Basic graphic design and marketing techniques are a plus, and educating yourself about spam filters is vital. But the art of the e-mail blast is not hard to master.

"You don't have to be technologically savvy to learn these skills," she says.

And e-mail blasts are essentially free, provided that your newspaper pays for Internet service. Mailing paper newsletters can cost thousands of dollars over time, Plewka says.

After all, you don't usually find easy, immediate and free rolled into one.

-- By Rashad Mulla, NAA Foundation intern 

About Marina Hendricks

Marina Hendricks is manager of the NAA Foundation. She manages Newspaper In Education, youth content and scholastic journalism programs, oversees the development of print and online products, and coordinates the NAA Foundation Web site, www.naafoundation.org. Before joining the Foundation, Marina was a features writer and the teen editor at The Charleston Gazette in West Virginia. She holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from Marshall University.