How to write for Scouting Magazine

Posted on 22 November, 2010 by ElisMatthews

Hello Readers of Jabbering all Day Long

Scouting Magazine

I’ve been asked to impart some advice for Members of the Movement on what the editors of Scouting are looking for when it comes to articles we publish in the magazine. I hope some of the tips I give here are useful and encourage people to offer ideas and contributions to the people who put together the magazine.

Planning the magazine
The way the magazine is put together takes into account a variety of factors. The editorial team meet two to three months in advance of publication to narrow down what will go on each page: the flatplan. Though this changes around right up to publication, this provides the framework and direction we try and stick to.

The flatplan is made up of bids from internal departments at UK Headquarters, derived from the organisational strategy; advertising themes we use to sell advertising (that subsidises the magazine); and stories we pick up from emails to scouting.magazine@scouts.org.uk and hear about online and through the PR team. And occasionally we may get an idea or a theme that takes our fancy and we get to follow it through to publication.

What works well
If we get an email in with a story, we analyse it based on a few key areas:

Originality. Have we covered this before/recently?
Quality. How well written is it (ie how much work will this be for me to edit)?
Story. What has happened, and how relevant is this to our readers?
Imagery. Are there photos attached to the article, and how good are they?

With a magazine like Scouting, with many readers who have been getting it for many years, we’re conscious of giving readers something different with each read, but at the same time the core activities of Scouting (camping, skills, activities, international adventure) are important to communicate to new leaders. So we look for the central elements but maybe with a different spin or angle.

In each issue we look for a mix of writing styles. Some should be opinion, some from a first person, some about an interview subject, and some that are more traditional reportage. Some humour is good, but the tone needs to be appropriate to what is being written about. Programme material, leadership techniques and good practice are what goes into the five sectional supplements, and case studies about leadership and management issues are fit for Focus, which goes to County and District Commissioners and Group Scout Leaders.

The story is absolutely vital, and sometimes it doesn’t need writing up by the person it happened to, and in these cases, give the magazine team the tip-off and we’ll work together with you on it. And we can sometimes follow up an email with a visit to your meeting (sometimes even with a photographer).

If only we had time…
Because of the time ahead we plan, it’s not possible to get to everywhere and to catch every story, and topical stories that are date sensitive can be hard to schedule for the magazine, although there are always stories for the website.

If in doubt
I think the best bet, if you’re considering sending in a story for the magazine or supplements is to send a summary of the story, or the event that’s coming up, to us first. Because the photos are so important to making the final decision, we may be able to send a photographer or provide guidance on the format they need to be.

I hope this provides some tangible advice in what we look for. The final detail is that a one page article is 350 words and a two page 650. Photos should be 300dpi and at least 1MB in size. You can send your ideas to scouting.magazine@scouts.org.uk or contact me direct at elis.matthews@scouts.org.uk.

Regards

Elis Matthews

Accountability In Scouting

Posted on 27 October, 2010 by atomicapple247

chickenblame This month’s blog entry is about Accountability in Scouting. By this I am thinking about the way we run Scouting on a day to day basis within groups, districts and counties, rather than doing actual events or activities. In my opinion, it’s something we all know about but it doesn’t seem to be seen as a priority.

Most of us have seen in our Scouting experience, a group or even a district that was once full of young members, lots of leaders and lots of activities going on. Then for various reasons whether it be people moving away, people not having the time any more or new people coming into the group, the group then starts failing, numbers drop, leaders leave or nothing gets done. Whatever the reasons and there can be many, someone needs to be making enquiries as to why this is happening and where suitable someone needs to be held accountable for this.

Now there are many reasons why a group can be failing, and they can often be reasons outside the hands of those running Scouting. New clubs could start up, there just might be a lack of children in the area, scouting might just not be popular in that area and so on. What I am talking about is examples like this one I came across 10 years ago. A group where someone started as GSL, who then ran the group as if it was his, who then had family members put into the main leadership positions. The group which was thriving previously, eventually went from having double sections to a Beaver Colony, Cub Pack and barely a Scout Troop. The reason being that all the leaders did was football competitions and games, so they lost lots of young people and leaders. But I’m sure we can all think of similar examples in our districts or counties. But people should be made accountable for this. Incidently when the example leaders above moved away and left the group 8 years later, the group started to grow in membership again. The last I heard they were thriving again.

Why is nobody from district or county then going round to groups and asking ‘Why are your numbers down by half?’ or ‘Why does this group no longer attend district events?’ or ‘Why are your leaders leaving?’. Now I am sure in some places this is happening, whether it be GSL’s, ADC’s, DC’s etc. But it doesn’t happen everywhere or in many places. Why can’t we have one person in each district or county, responsible for checking on groups once a year making sure recruitment is good, leaders are happy, balanced programmes are in place or nobody is finding it hard to cope. Any problems can then be rectified whether that be through advice and guidance or more training in certain areas. One of the leading reasons why leaders leave is because they don’t feel they get support or guidance.

Why can’t a strong group buddy up with a neighbouring group that is struggling, why can’t districts or counties use experienced section leaders to help out new or struggling leaders in other groups where possible. One benefit to Scouting would be to have a record of everyone’s leadership experience. In every section or place that I have been a leader in the past 15 years, the number of young people in that section has been over subscribed, I have recruited more leaders, the programme has always been full and varied. But nowhere is there a record of this. Now if experience like this was recorded, someone could look at my record and get me to help someone whose record shows they might be struggling.

In any paid job, there is standards and targets set to be achieved, in most cases if these standards are not met, you can often be sacked. Now Scouting is based on volunteering and we don’t want Scouting to be like going to work, unless you really enjoy your work. But there has to be some accountability in getting to a certain standard. As a young person’s organisation, we all have a responsibility to all the young people to give them the best possible programme of activities. If young people enjoy their Scouting experience, many will stay in touch with Scouting, whether it be staying in to become leaders, or making sure their own children join in with Scouting.

People might now be thinking, leave it to those that are already supposed to be doing this. But this isn’t happening, at least not from the many contacts I have around the country. I know it means introducing another role at a certain level. But we have to take this seriously and stop ducking, if we can ensure a certain standard surely this will benefit young people, leaders and groups alike.

Kind regards

@cilben

True Size of Africa – JOTA/JOTI Follow up

Posted on 20 October, 2010 by Kiff

Hello Dear Reader

As we have just come to the end of another JOTA/JOTI, I thought it would be very interesting to share with you this image which I found recently.

: Click the image to see original

The image is a small contribution in the fight against rampant Immappancy, and was created by Kai Krause

You may or may not be aware that the standard Mercator projection maps grossly distort the relative sizes of countries.In particular, the world maps we most often use exaggerate the size of northern-hemisphere countries like Europe, Canada and USA, while under-representing the size of third-world countries clustered around the equator.

A survey with random American Schoolkids let them guess the population and land area of their county. Not entirely unexpected, but still rather unsettling, the majority chose “1-2 billion” and “largest in the world”, respectively

Even with Asian and European college students, geographical estimates were often off by factors of 2-3.

That being said do we really grasp this distortion in any visceral sense? Quite the contrary: Each time we look at a distorting world map, we are subliminally reinforced in the prejudice that we’re big, and they’re small.

If you did take part in JOTA/JOTI maybe as a follow-up in your next meeting get out the Mercator projection map and print out a copy of the above map (from the original source) and compare the countries you spoke to let the young people see how small we really are.

TTFN

The True Size and Importance of Africa (Map) (treehugger.com)
True size of Africa (flowingdata.com)

TTFN

Kiff

©ChrisMeadows2012

Hello Reader – Are you new to Jabbering All Day Long can I suggest that you check out our Starter for Ten Page which will hopefully give you a guide as you take your first couple of footsteps around this site.

Skowt – all together now

Posted on 15 October, 2010 by Rob

Hello Jabbering,

Rob's profile on Skowt

I am Rob Gregory AESL with Centaurus ESU, Chesterfield, Derbyshire. I am also the Founder of www.skowt.com – a nifty new website for Scouting.

Chris has asked me to write a quick post about Skowt, so here we go.

What is Skowt?

Imagine a website just for Scouting, a place to call our own. Imagine a place that has social networking features but is really safe for all members. Imagine if things were made easier through better use of the internet for communication. Imagine if I could start a sentence without saying Imagine if…

…Skowt allows us to share information and experiences in a way that works for us as Scouters. Skowt makes life easier for volunteers, more fun for members and more certain for parents. With accounts for Young People, Leaders and Parents Skowt brings the communication benefits of the web to your Group, Unit, District or County.

You don’t need to know the first thing about building a website or how computers work. With Skowt you can:

Create and manage calendars and programmes
Create, upload and share documents
Share photos
Send messages
Create posts and comments

It’s relatively early days but here at Skowt Towers we are really excited about the future. With Groups joining each week we are quickly discovering what it is people want from a site like ours. We have a list of planned upgrades about 3 times longer than my arm! Watch this space for new features coming soon.

Why Skowt I hear you ask?

Skowt is a phonetic interpretation of the word Scout, it’s easy to remember and a little bit cheeky. Oh yeah, and it sounds just over a million times better than “Scout Group Management System”. Yes SGMS was on the list, yuk!

Want to know more?

We have some pretty big plans for Skowt and we want the readers of Jabbering and your Scouting colleagues to get involved. If you would like a demo or more information please get in touch.

Chris will be writing some guest blogs for us so make sure you keep an eye out for those.

TTFN

Rob

rob<AT>Skowt<DOT>co<DOT>uk

E-mail Inverview with the UKCC

Posted on 11 October, 2010 by Kiff

Wayne Bulpitt

Hello Dear Reader

At the end of September I announced that I would be conducting an e-mail interview with Wayne Bulpitt the UK Chief Commissioner. After collecting questions in from readers of Jabbering All Day Long, I put 13 questions to Wayne for him to answer.

Before we get to the questions here is a bit of background on Wayne’s Scouting life. Wayne was appointed UK Chief Commissioner in May 2009, having been Chief Commissioner of England (South) since September 2007, Chairman of the Association’s Board of Trustees until that date and an elected Trustee since 2001.

Wayne now lives in the Channel Island of Guernsey.

In 2009 Wayne’s service to Scouting was acknowledged with the award of A Bar to the Silver Acorn.

So on to the questions.

You are the UK Chief Commissioner – can you explain your Role?

The role of the UKCC is to lead and manage all volunteers within Scouting and in particular the team of Chief Commissioners, UK Commissioners and the International Commissioner. I am also responsible for managing some external relationships including engagement with political parties, our Scouting Ambassadors and other organisations. You can check out more at www.scout.org.uk/ukleadership..

What is your Scouting Timeline (e.g. cub, scout, venture, Queens Scout, Explorer belt, leader, DC, CC, Regional Commissioner, UKCC?

I used to look longingly at the Cub Scouts as they undertook their weekly activities in the School next to my parents flat and counted down the days to my eighth birthday when I was able to join the 1st Warsash Cub pack.

Since those days, I have been an active member of each section and became an assistant Scout Leader at the age of 18. Moving to the Channel Island of Guernsey in 1983, I was quickly made welcome and became Leader of the Northern Venture Scout Unit.

Returning to England, I rejoined my old Troop as Scout Leader for a few years. Back in Guernsey in 1992 and after a spell as Treasurer I was appointed Bailiwick Commissioner (a mix of District/County Commissioner) between 1998 – 2004. I took an interest in national Scouting, unhappy with how things were being run at the time, and stood for election as a Trustee of the Association. I was immediately appointed Chairman of the Association’s Finance sub-committee for 5 years, then Chairman of the Board itself in 2006/7 and Chief Commissioner of England South in September 2007.

What is your biggest personal achievement in Scouting?

Too many to mention in many respects, but the one that sticks out the most would be achieving my Queen Scout Award, closely followed by running my old Scout Troop in Warsash.

Is there anything UK Scouting should be, or could be doing better?

I am certainly very proud of where we are at the moment, with our 5th consecutive year of growth and increasing numbers of adults as well as young people however I do think there are lots of things we could be doing better.

Amongst the most important for me would include looking after the leaders that we have better and providing them with the appropriate tools e.g. IT, and, for young people, ensuring that we are able to offer a consistently exciting programme and Scouting to all young people that wish to join, or that we know will benefit from what we have to offer.

What is your goal for the 12 months from Jan 2011?

Our current priorities follow on from the question above in many respects, by ensuring that we are able to significantly reduce our joining lists and that all young people have an opportunity by having inspired and motivated leaders offering an exciting programme to young people.

I believe that we can do this primarily by making sure that Section and Unit leaders feel valued and better supported, and that the way to do this is by having effective leadership (e.g. Group Scout Leader, District Commissioner etc) at every level.

What is UK Scouting doing to encourage Scouting amongst young people, where Scouting membership is low? – (Ben Davidson – Wales)

We have developed a number of initiatives to support the recruitment of young people, some of which can be found through www.scouts.org.uk/brand and elsewhere on the website.

The starting point, has been working with groups to develop a local development plan which, amongst other things, will identify the groups’ needs and opportunities, such as more adults to tackle joining lists or the recruitment of young people where the group has room to take more.

Some specific initiatives have included recruitment campaigns in town centres (I went to one last year in Gwent) or visiting schools and running interactive assemblies etc. Your local Development Officer will be able to offer some assistance and ideas.

Does UK Scouting look at why leaders do leave Scouting, and what can be done about some of those reasons? – (Ben Davidson – Wales)

Yes, we have a system of exit interviews and have also developed a Recruitment and Retention strategy to help us better understand why volunteers leave us and what we can do to address that. It often comes back to feeling valued and having good support as I have mentioned earlier.

Why does UK scouting not give the same reverence/promotion to the Queen Scout Award that say the BSA give to the Eagle Scout Award.

This is a good question and something that we are presently looking into. I would certainly like to increase the number of members attaining their Queen Scout award (you can see some of my own thoughts at www.scout.org.uk/ccblog )and I believe we can do this in a number of ways. We are presently looking at the requirements for the Award itself, how we can promote it to our own members and once we have done this, how we can promote it externally, especially to employers to ensure that the achievements of recipients are better understood. I am always interested to know of other people’s thoughts and suggestions on how we can achieve this and many other challenges.

Every now and again a rumour pops up that the Scout Association and Girl Guiding UK are going to merge. And despite GGUK being the larger numerical organisation (although I have my doubts based on the local Guiding organisation where I live), it keeps reappearing. Do you believe the SA and GGUK will ever merge and how are relations with GGUK? – (Nick Wood, Staffordshire)

We have a good relationship with GGUK and I meet regularly with Liz Burnley, Chief Guide to discuss areas of mutual interest, of which there are many, and we recognise that with more than 1,000,000 young people and over 200,000 adult volunteers in our two organisations, we are a powerful voice for young people and adult volunteering.

Personally, I believe that our future is in closer partnership on areas that make sense (infrastructure, lobbying, facilities, some training for example), but that there are far too many issues that make merging impractical and undesirable.

As you know, the biggest challenge facing Groups is ensuring they have enough adult support. Some Groups are lucky and are able fill positions easily, where as some can try all the methods of recruitment and still have difficulties getting enough help. With the Government’s ‘Big Society’ ideas and the review into health and safety legislation, do you think these and other initiatives will help with adult recruitment and remove the worries people have about volunteering? – (Nick Wood, Staffordshire)

We are presently developing a recruitment and retention strategy, the results of which we expect to be able to share later this year.

As I have said, I don’t believe we have a particular difficulty in recruiting volunteers (we have after all been increasing our numbers against a national trend). However I do believe we need to put an increased effort into retaining the volunteers that we have already recruited and I expect this to be a key feature of our work over the next few years.

Clearly the Governments “Big Society” is something that will assist us but I believe that greater success will be achieved through our work with key employers, including the Civil Service, where we are working to persuade them of the benefits of volunteering and that the training we offer adults for example is good for their employment and HR strategies.

By continuing to develop the profile of Scouting we will be able to combat the negative images that volunteering to work with young people sometimes create. I do believe however that the perceptions of concerns about CRB and Health & Safety legislation are a far greater problem for us than the actual impact that these things have on our activities or volunteering. We are often our own worse enemy in this regard of concerns about CRB and Health & Safety legislation are a far greater problem for us than the .

The next major event on the scouting radar is 22nd WSJ but what is next for UK Scouting?

The 22nd world Scout Jamboree is as much an event for UK Scouting as it is for the world Movement with over 4,000 members participating.

We also have a number of programme initiatives planned in conjunction with the Jamboree and, in 2012, the Olympics. More important for me however are the 10’s of 1,000’s regular activities that take place weekly in Groups and Districts across the UK.

Do you think Scouting will ever have a Female Chief Scout?

Yes, definitely.

What is Bear Like? (Maid Marion Hertfordshire)

Bear is an awesome and very inspiring individual who feels passionately about Scouting and the difference that it can make to peoples lives.

It is really nice to work with a celebrity like Bear who really believes in what we do and how to make a difference but who, at heart, is a great family man with strong personal values.

I would like to thank Ben Davidson, Nick Wood and Maid Marion for sending me questions to put to Wayne and I hope the responses answer the questions you had.

I would also like to thank Wayne for taking time out of his busy schedule to answer the questions.

TTFN