Newsletter Submission Guidelines
Have something you’d like to share across the Diocese of California?
The Communications Working Group would love to hear from you and your congregation/ministry! Send us your submissions, written in the third person, to [email protected]. We accept 4 types of submission: stories, photos (with captions), resources, and events.
Please read below to see how we now share your content and the requested submission guidelines, organized by the four types of content we typically receive. As always, please write according to our House Style Guide.
Please click the button below that corrilates to your submission for details regarding what to include.
Story
Photo
Resource
Event
Please note: For all four types of submissions
Inclusion of submissions is at the discretion of the Communications Working Group. The deadline for submission is Sunday, 5 p.m.; please email to [email protected].
Note: The diocesan newsletter does not run the weeks of Christmas and New Year’s. Please keep in mind when scheduling your submissions.
Story
DioCal News & Events is for you — and by you — the congregations and ministries of the Diocese of California.
Has your ministry or church recently held an event or reached a milestone? Have you just celebrated the ministry of a new rector or vicar?
Submit your story (written in the third person) and once approved, we will edit and post it to our website News Section. We will also run a photo, caption, and link to the story in the “News from our Church” section in the next newsletter with space available. Please submit at least one high resolution photo (1200 pixels wide or larger) with your story.Please fact-check your articles before submitting. Ask: Are the names spelled correctly? Is all the information accurate? Does any information need to be attributed to a particular source? Is everyone in your photo either over the age of 18 or you have a signed permission form from their guardian.
Photo
We love sharing photos of you and your congregation in action!
Please submit wide photos/images (1200px wide by 800px height works well), a brief caption written in third person (1-2 sentences), and the name of the photographer to [email protected] to run in the “News from our Church” section of the newsletter! We will also post accepted photos and captions to our two social media platforms: Facebook and Instagram.
Is everyone in your photo either over the age of 18 or do you have a signed permission form from their guardian? If no to both, then we cannot run the photo.
Resource
Did you launch a new resource for ministry that you’d like your neighbor churches to know about and use? Send it to [email protected] and we will run in the “Resource of the Week” section of the newsletter on a week there is availability and will post to our Facebook and Instagram accounts!
Event
Is there an event you want to invite folks across the Diocese to? Send it to [email protected] and we will publish your event to the online Diocesan Calendar and run it in the list of upcoming events in our weekly newsletter from six weeks before until the event has passed. We may also share the event on our Facebook and Instagram platforms. If you have a facebook event link, please include that in your submission.
New to the new newsletter: We will not run your full ad in the newsletter, but it will be listed in full on the website Diocesan Calendar and linked for multiple weeks in the newsletter. This also means there is no longer a limit to how many events you can submit per week! Feel free to send as many events as you’d like listed on our Diocesan Calendar!
If you submit multiple events, do not submit as a list (our past practice). Instead, please submit full ads for each event.
Guidelines:
Copy paste the template text below and fill in with your event’s information
Title (include name of church and city)
Please write a descriptive paragraph about your event. Preferably no more than 5 sentences. Of course, now with the new format of going onto the DioCalendar, we will not limit your word count.
When*: Sunday, Month 9, 12:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m. (list the start and end time, an aproximate end time is okay)
Where*: Church name, street address, city
Cost*: free, sliding scale, or ticket price: $25 (general); $15 (student); Free (ages X and under)
Contact: Contact person’s name, email address (we encourage using office lines instead of cell phone numbers if you must list a phone number. Phone numbers are completely optional for contact info)
Link(s): Link to event page on church’s website or Facebook event, or general church website address
*Anything marked with an asterisk (*) is must-have info. Everything else is optional.
Please be sure to submit an event image, according to these guidelines:
- Image copyright: Do you have permission to use the image/photo you’re providing? It may be copyright infringement to use an image from the Internet. A free stock image sites we recommend are Unsplash or Pixabay, which do not require permissions or credit lines.
- Our website calendar requires wide photos and graphics, 1200px by 800px works well. If you can crop it, great!
- Minors in image. If there are people under the age of 18, do you have a release from their guardian to use their photo? Please indicate when you submit a photo with a minor from your congregation or ministry.
