Clubs and club magazines...

[Jolly Jeeper]

In case anyone's interested, what follows is the text of a presentation I was asked to make at the Heritage Motor Museum about the importance of club newsletters. I include it here because there's a lot of people on this forum in one or more clubs. Those who've been here a while may remember that last year's presentation about the future of clubs found its way into something of a hot topic about the MVT - hopefully this post won't be as controversial. JC

 

 

The Importance of Club Newsletters and Magazines

 

1. Why am I qualified to address this meeting?

 

It's a good questions and the answer starts here last year when Emma Rawlinson asked me to speak about the future for classic car and bike clubs. Then I explained that I'd been a gearhead since I was a kid and that as soon as I was old enough to buy my first car, a Morris Minor Traveller, I'd joined the Owners' club too. That was in 1978 and since then I've been a long term member of numerous owners' clubs including the MMOC (1979), MVT (1985), LR Series I Club (1989) and a member of numerous other clubs along the way such as the Triumph Owners MCC (TOMCC). As a result of this I've seen a lot of club newsletters and magazines over the years, this combined with the fact that I've worked on commercial magazines for the past 20 years at least allows me to have opinions on the subject!

 

2. Types of clubs

 

There are two basic types of club regardless of what they focus on - cars or bikes - namely regional clubs and national clubs and it's fair to say they are slightly different and so have different requirements from a club magazine or news letter. Much of the remainder of this presentation will be about National clubs but let's just mention regional clubs. These tend to have a local focus - West Yorkshire Classic Car Club for example (I just made that up) but its members will live within a defined area, attend events together and can, if they choose to, attend a local monthly get together. The local club's newsletter can be little more than confirmation of the events - I am a member of Pennine LRC, a competitive MSA-registered club with a history going back to the sixties and these days their newsletter is exactly that - a list of event dates, venues and contact 'phone numbers.

 

The National Clubs are a completely different kettle of fish because the members are fare more widely spread to the extent that they have local branches that act like local clubs - West Yorkshire branch of the Morris Minor Owners Club or example; I know this exists as I was at the founding meeting in 1980/81.

 

However consider this scenario - again from my own experience - and it could be the Military Vehicle Trust, the National Morris Minor Owners Club or the Land Rover Series I Club all of which I'm a current member of. A member can be in the club, have the relevant vehicle on the road, be into it and drive it as often as possible but due to pressures of work, family and/or other commitments not attend a local branch (if there is one nearby), may not know other local members and may not even be able to go to local events. As a result he or she is something of a 'sleeper' member who apparently does little more than pay sub and receive a newsletter or magazine. It is my experience that, in large national owners' clubs like the MVT, MMOC and the Series I Club these members are often the most numerous. However they are just as valuable as the member who attends every event because it is these silent members who provide the numbers for club insurance, schemes, buy stuff from the club shop by mail order or on-line, keep club spares schemes afloat through purchasing stock and patronise the advertisers in club magazines. To these members the club magazine is the most important part of the membership and as a result, I believe, it has to justify the annual membership fee as its own!

 

3. The world is changing

 

We live in a rapidly changing world and change is happening as fast in the communication industry as anywhere else. A club member can get commercial magazines, can access the www, can be in electronic clubs and web forums so communications from the club he or she is a member of are not as important as they once were. An example when I first became interested in Land Rovers the newsletter - several photocopied sheets of folded A4 was a bimonthly event to be savoured. Nowadays though the results of events are on the web (along with pictures of it), web forums provide quicker feedback and more lively debate and so or so Rover Torque forum Lancs and Cheshire ROC isn't as important as it once was...

 

Another example is that Windscreen, the magazine of the MVT, was one of essentially, only two sources of military vehicle info, the other being the quarterly Wheels and Tracks, so its arrival on the doormat was a notable moment. Now however there are two commercial military vehicle magazines available that encroach on the MVT magazines territory meaning that it is less desirable and certainly less essential reading.

 

The world is changing in another way too; classic and bike owners are living in a world where, largely unfairly, they are being targeted for environmental reasons. Often these enthusiasts are inadvertently caught in the need of legislation about other issues but are faced with the thread of widening low emission zones, congestion charging zones, road pricing as well as issues about asbestos in brakes, solvent in paint, emissions, recycling, end of life directives, etc - all of which can be considered a threat to our hobby in one way or another yet there has been little info about this in, for example, Minor Matters of the MMOC, despite that club representing its members. I note that from Practical Classics magazine that the organisation itself, the FBHVC has opted only to represent owners club of low mileage cherished cars. I don't yet know all the details, but feel this is a naive policy when faced with what, appears to me to be a thin end of the wedge situation. Club magazines need to campaign on behalf of their membership and inform the membership of the issues that we face. Who'd have thought that driving a 1968 Morris Minor in 2008 would be almost a political act?

 

4. So what do we put in club magazines?

 

Current news that relates to that club's membership?

Yes

Club event dates?

Yes

Members' letters?

Yes

Tales of members' cars?

Yes

Stuff that is on the web the day after an event?

No

Specialist advertising that relates to own cars?

Yes

What about cars for sale?

Well, eBay has changed the face of specialist car buying especially for plentiful machines such as Land Rovers and Morris Minors

Do we make our magazines look line ones you'd find in WH Smiths?

No because it's often easier just to go to Smiths! The IMPS - Invicta Military Vehicle Preservation Soc - has relaunched their club magazine and it looks like a league division 2 version of the CMV from Kelsey. Why would the membership want two versions of the same thing?

 

Club newsletters or magazines need to offer, I believe, a combination of the following:

 

1. News that relates to the club in questions membership. This can be dates of events etc

2. Stories that relate to the club's audience such as epic restorations, discoveries of rare cars and so on

3. The politics of classic car ownership - like it or loathe it, we have to deal with an anti-car lobby and if we want to drive about in the machines of another era we've got to defend our rights to do so

4. Stuff that is too specialist about our chosen subject for the likes of Practical Classics or Land Rover World to bother with

5. Event calendars that relate to our chosen vehicles rather than the general lists in commercial magazines that anyone can see!

 

The way to look at it is to consider your club's magazine as the local paper of your community. If you live in Huddersfield, the Huddersfield Examiner will keep you up to date with births, marriages, deaths, villains locked up, bring and by sales, dogs that need a good home and so on. If you live in "Morris Minorville" the Minor Matters should do exactly the same - for the Minor community.

 

5. Is it as easy as this?

 

No not really. Most of my examples relate to large national clubs with a large membership - it's harder for tiny clubs although the smaller clubs tend to be even more specialised. I met a chap whose passion was Land Crab rally cars - there's one here in the museum - and have an owners club for these rare cars, The club know of all their survivors but will never have a huge membership - despite this they are fanatics - something we as classic car owners have to respect - and when I was able to help him with a couple of London-Sydney Rally photos he'd never seen he was able to enthusiastically pas this on to other members including the chap who owned the car in the pictures. This made membership of the group worthwhile to those guys who are never gong to be able to publish a great glossy newsletter. Larger clubs don't face such difficulties and can afford to pay their newsletter editors.

 

6. The lesson for today

 

The lesson for clubs is that as the newsletter or magazine is often the only contact many members have with a national owners' club - the club magazine has to be truly excellent to allow members a reason to remain in that club.

 

To close, and in case you're thinking well he can say all this but what does it matter to him? Well, I'll be honest and say that in the year between last year's presentation which turned out not to be as controversial as I'd thought because I'm not along in pondering the future of the classic vehicle scene, I've taken on the role of editing Legend the magazine of the Land Rover Series I Club's magazine. It's a busman's holiday for me and there's plenty of rough edges to be filed off this first example. I mention this only to illustrate that I'm speaking from my heart on this subject and fully appreciate the difficulties clubs face!

 

7. Conclusions

 

1. Club magazine has to justify membership fee

2. World is changing - newsletters and magazines must evolve

3. Old cars becoming more and more of a political issue

4. Content must be relevant to membership

5. Magazine must be the local paper of your scene

6. Magazine must be excellent to retain members in a club as it's often the only benefit

 

Thank you - any questions?

 

[Jack]

John - that is a great presentation and I, for one, will enjoy this thread. With regards to Legend - don't change it, it is pretty much there for me.

 

JB

[N.O.S.]

Another variation (as practised - or certainly was - by the Industrial Railway Society) is to make the magazine available without membership at a slight discount over full membership rate. Here the quality of magazine is paramount. No idea if any vehice clubs offer this :dunno: