HOW I WON FAME AND FORTUNE AS A COMMODORE NEWSLETTER EDITOR

by Dick Estel 
 
I have managed for most of my 50+ years to avoid joining 
organizations. I have belonged to two square dance clubs, the 4H 
Club, the YMCA Indian Maidens, and a computer club. Even when I 
joined, I managed to avoid being very active. I did not expect any 
change in this approach when I handed over $24 to become a member 
of the Fresno Commodore User Group/64UM in February, 1988.
 
With only three months as a computer user behind me, I attended a 
couple of meetings, sat quietly and listened, copied disks from 
the library, and tried to learn as much as I could.
 
Then came a fateful day when the editor of the newsletter 
announced that he could no longer continue the task. A volunteer 
was needed to take over. It would only take a few hours two nights 
a month. He would help the new editor get started. The silence was 
deafening. The president suggested that anyone who decided they 
might be interested could contact her later.
 
Well, I was intrigued. I have been a newspaper editor or writer, 
mostly of amateur standing, since age 13. I wrote and published a 
family newspaper on my Smith-Corona portable back then. I wrote 
for and edited my high school newspaper, wrote for the local 
weekly, and worked on my college paper, a fairly professional 
effort that came out three times a week. All this was of course 
far in the past, but it seemed like an appropriate opportunity to 
jump back into journalism. After the meeting I told the president 
that I would be willing to give it a try.
 
Those of you who are my counterparts at other Commodore clubs can 
already imagine how extensive my training was. It consisted mostly 
of my predecessor delivering a box containing a stapler, glue 
stick, blank page forms, miscellaneous clip art, bulk mail forms 
and related items. He did patiently answer all my frantic 
questions by phone during the rocky first months. In fact, for 
several months he continued to print the newsletter text on his 
daisy wheel printer, while I printed headlines and graphics with 
Paperclip Publisher. This was followed by a lengthy session with 
the notorious glue stick, then the inevitable two trips to the 
print shop (drop off and pick up), several hours collating and 
stapling, and finally a visit to the bulk mail facility of the 
local post office.
 
While I was happy with those early efforts, I also knew there 
could be something better. It seemed philosophically and morally 
wrong to produce a computer club newsletter with paste and an 
Xacto knife. I vowed to convert "my" newsletter to a true computer 
newsletter, despite the obvious limitations of the program I was 
using, Paperclip Publisher.
 
Ultimately, of course, these limitations led me to decide that I 
would have to try geoPublish. I already owned GEOS 1.3, but had 
rarely used it. When the upgrade offer for GEOS 2.0 came out, I 
sent in my $29; and also ordered geoPublish and Desk Pack Plus. 
Graphics, words, and a way to put them all together--I was on my 
way to creating a real computer newsletter.
 
In November, 1988, six of ten pages were created with geoPublish, 
and in December the first all-GEOS and all-computer issue "hit the 
stands."
 
In addition to the main part of the newsletter with Christmas 
graphics and special headings, I included a 1989 calendar and a 
December calendar. The basic 1989 calendar was produced and 
printed with The Write Stuff word processor, with a border, 
heading and graphics created in geoPublish. The December calendar 
was done in a similar manner, using PrintMaster Plus for the dates 
and grid and geoPublish to jazz it up.
 
Although the promised "two nights a month" are more like eight or 
ten, our newsletter is now 100% computer-made, and is something I 
am proud to have my name associated with.
 
And the fortune? Well, admittedly that is still to come, and my 
fame is limited to occasional reprints of our articles (sometimes 
photocopied intact) in other user group publications. I have 
received quite a few compliments on the look of our newsletter 
from our own members as well as people I have heard from 
throughout the country.
 
All in all doing the newsletter is the most fun thing I do with my 
computer, and I have never regretted taking that extra step that 
got me involved more deeply then I ever imagined in a computer 
club. 

(Written in 1989)