Aims and principles

Aims:

  • to provide news, views, announcements of and reports on events of essentially a short-term nature, together with feature articles of general interest;
  • to have a complementary role to its sister website, Deddington Online.  

Objectives:
To produce by the first of each month (with the exception of January and August), a printed newsletter based on the above aims and distributed free to all households in the civil parish of Deddington (Deddington, Clifton and Hempton, in the country of Oxfordshire). To make the document available to a wider audience via the internet.

Those objectives are achieved by:

  • delegating the collection of copy to a team of sub-editors;
  • reviewing all copy for suitability and legality, and copy editing;|
  • collecting advertisement material: annual advertisements to be pre-printed, and one-off advertisements to be incorporated into the layout;
  • laying out copy, advertisements and pictures in a 16pp A4 format on a PC or Mac;
  • creating pdf files;
  • printing the pages, currently on a Risograph machine;
  • collating and stapling into a magazine format;
  • distributing by hand to over 1000 houses in the parish of Deddington;
  • uploading pdf files of each issue to the Deddington News website;
  • maintaining up-to-date accounts which are audited annually.

The editorial aim of DN is to maintain the independence of the magazine while balancing impartiality, freedom of expression, inclusiveness, literary standards, community involvement and sheer readability.

The current and previous editors have managed the DN enterprise according to three guiding principles:

Non-political: does not accept ‘party political’ features. It does include telephone numbers for the Parish Council, Cherwell District Council and the constituency MP.

Non-sectarian: sees itself as representing the civil parish rather than the ecclesiastical parish of the established church, although it does include a single regular ecumenical ‘church and chapel’ news page.

Non-commercial: no puffs for commercial enterprises are accepted; all commercial organisations pay for advertising, as do charities where they are advertising an event with an entry charge.

Disclaimer
The views expressed are not necessarily those of the editors or the committee.

All material is proof read to check that it is not scurrilous, libellous or otherwise unacceptable to the public at large. The DN team reserves the right to refuse any material on this basis. The editors' decision is final.

Copyright
The DN always seeks copyright permission where appropriate.

Inclusion of an advertisement or insert does not constitute any recommendation or endorsement of the organisations concerned on the part of Deddington News. The DN takes no responsibility and gives no guarantees, warranties or representations, implied or otherwise, for the content or accuracy of these advertisements.

Letters to the postbag must always contain the author’s name and either a telephone number or current email address, even if these are not for publication.

Election of governing body
By voting within the committee.

Joining the group
Over the years DN has actively sought volunteers from the local community to help with all aspects of the editing, production, printing and distribution processes.

Are we worth it?
In Deddington’s recent Parish Plan, 98% of respondents said they were reliant on the Deddington News for local information. And we can demonstrate requests for assistance from within the community in publicising events. DN is distributed free of charge to all households.

Copyright © The Deddington News 2008

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