Why Do We Still Need a Weekly Newsletter?

This was first discussed in the October 6, 2022 issue of BALITA, or almost one year ago. But writing more about it today is still very relevant. We all know that Manila Rotarians (almost all, if not all) are already part of the Club’s various social media chat groups. In these social platforms, announcements and photos of events and meetings are posted in real time. With this, do we still need a weekly newsletter? Everyone may have noticed that, since the start of Rotary year 2023-24, BALITA has been issued exclusively in digital format. No printed copies are distributed during each meeting, and the members are assumed to have gotten the soft copy featured in the viber group chat and the Facebook page.

Indeed, and as expressed last year, we now live in a digital age where reliance on social media is rapidly growing, where online posts of on-going events are instantly available, where chat groups enable one and all to get quick updates of the events and news of the day, and where there is growing preference for bite-sized messages rather than long and kilometric articles. With this, it may be timely to ask anew: is a newsletter publication still in vogue?

Every Thursday, in time for the weekly regular meeting, the Rotary Club of Manila publishes a newsletter that seeks, among others, to update members about all the exciting things that are going on in RCM and with its members. It features the program set out for the meeting, the profile of the guest speaker, as well as the highlights of the past week’s activities. This is a product of the Editorial Board’s weekly labor of love – a team effort.

BALITA, first published regularly 103 years ago in the form of a bulletin consisting of a few pages, was and continues to be passionately nurtured and developed. At one point, Balita was hailed as the most complete club newsletter in the Rotary world. Thus, the first Rotary Club in Asia takes pride not only in its being a centennial club, but also because of many other feats, among them the sustained weekly publication over all these years (except during the Second World War) of its weekly club newsletter.

Today, after more than 100 years of regular publication, BALITA continues to serve as the Rotary Club of Manila’s diary and chronicler of activities, programs, institutional events, and various milestones. If one wishes to know the RCM’s mood and activities in, say, December 1966, he can be assured that the pages of BALITA published during that time will provide such information.

True. We now live in a different world, an era that is vastly different 103 years ago. But the values and virtues that Rotary represents remain the same. Chronicling the Club’s activities as a service and humanitarian organization indubitably remains important to celebrate each act of service. Celebrating each Manila Rotarian’s devotion to the mantra – service above self -- is still very much worth the pages or the digital space on which they are featured.

Surely, it is a worthwhile task to publish a weekly newsletter that assiduously collates, records, features, and acknowledges what RCMers do today, not only because of the impact on the beneficiaries, but also because of the inspiration it will bring to future Manila Rotarians who will hopefully read about and appreciate these service-above-self activities many years from now.

This is why the message is worth reiterating: The Rotary Club of Manila, through the Editorial Board, must and will dedicatedly continue and self-effacingly pursue the weekly publication of BALITA.