Reports

South Tyneside Meeting - January 2004 "Trials, Tribulations and Triumphs of being the NDFHS Journal Editor" by Richard Rainbow A Report by Margaret Stafford

Well, what an evening! Thanks to one of our members, Harry, and the Shields Gazette, we doubled our usual numbers to 42 with the chapel full to overflowing. I'm sure they also came along to hear our speaker, Richard Rainbow, esteemed editor of the journal whose topic was "trials, tribulations and triumphs of being the NDFHS journal editor. "

With so many new people tonight we took advantage of having the current chairman and vice chairman in attendance and gave a "whistle stop" introduction to the society and we hope to see at least some of the new faces back again next month.

Back to Richard who reminded us the journal appears 4 times per year and advised that his main aim is not to necessarily increase membership but to at least keep the current membership. He thinks the numbers have remained steady during the 2 years he has been the incumbent.

He reminded the audience that he is part of a large team which produces the journal. There are about 30 currently in all, with particular tribute being paid to the Durham branch over 20 of whom for 11 years have posted out the journal, offering both a high quality service and a huge financial saving to the society. John Perkins and his wife were singled out for keeping the whole project on track.

John and the Durham group are retiring in the summer and the journal will be posted out by a commercial organisation, our previous experiences of this service have not been good so fingers are crossed-watch out for your autumn journal!!

Richard commented that material submitted to him is seldom ready for printing, it has to be laid out, designed, "made to fit". George Buckley is responsible for this feat. The material laid out then has to be proof read before going to printing.

There are 4, 500 magazines produced every quarter at a cost of £3, 000 to the society, a considerable cost. The overall cost will rise with the switch to commercial posting in the autumn. There is a very small income from adverts (apparently in the past there has been trouble getting people to pay for the adverts!!).

One of the key inserts is the list of material available for purchase from the society, bringing help to members who cannot get to the research centre at Bolbec Hall, Gerry Langley undertakes this piece of work.

Members' interests are a key feature of any family history publication and Phil Thirkell is responsible for transferring sometimes scrappy pieces of paper with indecipherable writing into what Richard believes is the best members' interest section of any family history publication in the country.

The aim of the editor is to produce a journal which informs, entertains and instructs-but has to be balanced. He receives piles of material of the "how I did my family history last week" variety but needs to look at what will appeal to a wider audience-is there a twist to the tale as in one article recently where the male partner changed his name on marriage.

What is certain is you can't please everyone, there is always something which creeps in inadvertently and upsets someone. People send in articles which have nothing to do with family history or the North East and then take Richard to task for not publishing them. When people threaten to withdraw an article because it has not yet been published, Richard agrees to send it back, only to find he then gets longer time to consider publication!!!

Articles with no surnames for example are of limited interest (think of how you approach the journal-do you skim the long articles initially to see if there is something of particular relevance to your research ? I know I do). Care has to be taken in making the final decision to publish. At this point Richard confessed to having been black-listed by a national newspaper for 4 years for saying something about the editor and admits one of the worries of being an editor is the worry about being sued for libel and asked the chairman to check he is covered by insurance!!

Richard's aim is to try and preserve the sense of what is written even where considerable changes have to be made. Sometimes things won't fit on a page and have to be moved about. He is not looking for politically correct material and will include colloquialisms happily but the key is that the article must make sense to the reader who doesn't have the advantage of knowing the subject as intimately as the writer. He has sometimes been thanked by a writer for publishing an article which in fact has been re-written so it bears little resemblance to the original submission! Perhaps fortunately for Richard very few people seem to keep copies of things they submit.

Taking into account the "pass it on" factor, each magazine is probably read by 3. 000 more people than the circulation of 4, 500, sometimes 20 years later on a second hand stall! Many people who contact Richard are not members of the society and one of the main plusses of the job is the contact with lots of very nice people by phone, email, in writing or in person. He reckons to have a contact in every country the journal is sent to and some it isn't eg China. This can of course have its downside as for example people forget about the time difference or ring him at 7 00 am in the morning to complain about a change he has made in the text!

Being the editor also enables you to introduce topics of particular concern such as the proposed changes to registration and access to information or the "topple testing" of gravestones which is leading to so many being laid flat because of the worry of the local authorities of being sued for injury.

Richard started his own family history about 7 or 8 years ago (when you could still just turn up at Morpeth record office without needing to book!!) in a moment of boredom and of course became obsessed (like the rest of us).

When he considers where his main triumph lies, he feels that it is the fact the magazine has appeared for the last 2 years. He says that if you could see his study currently you would feel that there is no chance of the spring 2004 journal ever appearing on time!! On that very subject he also explained why he never publishes a deadline date-people would wait until the last minute to submit and still expect their article to appear in full!

The editor really is "just" responsible for putting all the bits together. He claims to have made about 20 changes to the journal since taking over (this week's competition-how many of them can you name) and says no one except his wife has commented on them!

He hopes to include material which will help members find new ways of researching, or new sources to consider, as well as offering a forum for expressing views (as long as they are not offensive, libellous or irrelevant).

All in all Richard admits to enjoying the role as editor and shows no sign of wanting to resign-he left to continue with the preparation of the spring journal complaining about all those group secretaries who make late submissions-so I took the hint and have forwarded our spring programme on.