EXTERNAL NEWSLETTERS
These are for your customers and potential customers. What are they interested in? Do you think they’d like to hear about who in your company got married, had a baby or celebrated a birthday, or about how your new product or service can save them time and money and make their businesses more efficient?

Give your readers useful information:

* A few ideas they can implement immediately to make their businesses more profitable.

* Updates on trends in your industry which may affect them.

* “How to” information so they can do things themselves (you can’t expect your customers to buy EVERYTHING from you).

* General articles that help them save time and money and make their business and personal lives more meaningful.

BONUS: A great way to honor a customer is to highlight them in your newsletter. This not only creates good will between you and the customer you’re writing about, but shows others that you value your business relationships.

INTERNAL NEWSLETTERS
What do employees want to know? A survey conducted by the International Association of Business Communicators yielded the following results:

* Organizational plans for the future - company goals, expansion, etc.

* Job advancement opportunities.

* Job related “how to” information.

* How local, state, world events or changes in the business climate affect their job, their company and their customers.

* Productivity improvement.

* Human Resources policies and practices.

* Staff changes and promotions.

* Benefits information.

* How we’re doing vs. the competition.

* Recognition of employees for achievements.

* Human interest stories about employees/customers.

* Personal news (birthdays, marriages, anniversaries, births, etc.).

* News of what’s going on in departments/divisions.

* Financial results.

* How profits are used.

* Advertising and promotional plans.

* Company’s community involvement.

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Jeff Rubin, a former newspaper reporter and editor and instructor at The Learning Annex in San Francisco, is The Newsletter Guy, owner of the Pinole, California-based newsletter publishing firm of the same name (http://www.thenewsletterguy.com). He’s written and designed more than 1,800 company newsletters since starting his business in 1981. He may be reached via e-mail at jeff@thenewsletterguy.com or by phone at (877) 588-1212. Jeff is also a professional speaker http://www.jeffrubinspeaks.com. His programs for companies, organizations, and professional associations concentrate on effective writing and marketing techniques, customer delight, and integrity for owners of small businesses.

Students unready for community college
By Matt Krupnick, Contra Costa Times

Community colleges need immediate help to handle their hundreds of thousands of unprepared students, the state Legislative Analyst’s Office reported Monday. High schools should assess the college readiness of students interested in attending two-year schools, the report concluded, and legislators should reform laws to permit colleges to spend more money on counselors and tutors.

The report follows increasing recognition that reading, writing and math deficiencies could cripple the state’s economy in the near future. Nearly 700,000 students took remedial math and English courses at California’s 109 community colleges in 2006-07, and thousands more needed remedial work but did not take those courses.

State law prohibits colleges from requiring students to take tests to determine their college readiness, said the report’s author, Paul Steenhausen. And high schools are not doing enough to explain to students what they need to know before entering college, he said.

“That makes it virtually impossible for community colleges to serve the under-prepared students,” he said. “A lot of students don’t even know about (college) standards until they get to college.”

Other studies have shown that students who take remedial courses are much less likely to complete college, especially those in the most basic English and math courses. Only one of every 10 students in the lowest-level courses makes it to a college-level class in those subjects.

But state law requires community colleges - which are expected to educate California’s least-prepared students - to spend at least half their budgets on classroom instruction. The law, known as the 50-percent rule, severely restricts colleges from hiring enough counselors or tutors.

Lawmakers need to give colleges more flexibility to spend their money as needed, Steenhausen said, and also should allow the schools to require unprepared students to take remedial courses.

Legislative help may be too much to expect. Few lawmakers understand the challenges facing community colleges, even lawmakers in top leadership roles.

One education legislator repeatedly declined to answer questions about the 50-percent rule Monday, instead saying that elementary school classrooms should have fresh paint and newer textbooks.

“I’m trying to take a more global approach than just one solution,” said Assemblyman Anthony Portantino, D-La Canada Flintridge, chairman of the Assembly Higher Education Committee.

The community college system has spent several months looking into remedial needs with its Basic Skills Initiative. But administrators are moving cautiously before making major policy changes, said Linda Michalowski, a statewide vice chancellor.

California’s education deficiencies start long before college, she said.

“A radical solution that doesn’t solve the problem is never good,” she said. “This is also a K-through-12 problem, and maybe even primarily a K-through-12 problem.

“If we only focus (on community colleges), we continue to have a pipeline where students have many years of failure behind them.”

Some educators and administrators said the Basic Skills Initiative has helped increase policymakers’ awareness of the state’s remedial problems.

“Now that the community college system has done such a good job of outlining it with research and data, we can articulate our need,” said Pamela Luster, a vice president at Las Positas College in Livermore.

~ Editor’s note: In addition to his newsletter business and public speaking, Jeff founded National Punctuation Day and appears as Punctuation Man, with his wife, Norma, as they perform Punctuation Playtime, a school assembly program that helps promote punctuation skills in elementary education.