History of Northwood News - by Alan Welfoot, Editor

The concept of having a Parish Magazine delivered free to every household within Northwood Parish was first realised in the early 1970s, when the then current Rector of Northwood Parish Church, The Rev'd Eddie Dana, started creating a news sheet which consisted mainly of details of the church services and a monthly letter.

Prior to that there had only been a Parish newsletter combining Northwood with the Parish of Carisbrooke, and this was made in limited quantities, only available in church, and for which a charge was made.

Rev'd Dana’s successor, The Rev'd Richard Parker, continued the practice of producing a free newsletter solely for Northwood until he left in 1988, when his successor, The Rev'd Roger Salter, wished someone else to take on the task.

So from 1988 the production of Northwood News was undertaken by Ray Price, Churchwarden, with the Rector supplying a monthly letter and Ray painstakingly typing every word for several years on a wide-bed manual typewriter armed only with a bottle of Tippex and strong tea from his wife Betty. The limitations of a manual typewriter meant that most of the pages remained the same month by month, with only the core news items and services on the middle pages needing to be changed each time. The few illustrations that appeared were stuck on the paper and photo-copied, and some ingenious methods of early desk-top publishing were experimented with!

Unfortunately, because of the limitations of the typewriter and archaic printing process all the pages looked the same and the printing was very flat, faint and featureless. In 1992, being a bit into computers and their graphics capabilities I approached Ray and offered to transfer all the data to my home computer, which in those days was a much-loved but over-worked Commodore Amiga. He thought it might be a good idea, so we agreed that Ray would remain as Editor, supplying me with the information as it came in. We started a trial run in 1992 with me just producing the covers in order to give the magazine’s appearance a little lift, and Ray still typing the internal pages. We waited for the new influx of advertisers so we could create their advertisements on the computer and scan in all their logos and illustrations, then in January 1993 we had the whole of the contents computerised and ready to go. Hopefully we transformed the ‘look’ of the magazine in one great leap forward, and I think most comments that we received were favourable.

The Rev'd Roger Salter was succeeded in March 1993 by The Rev'd Clive Burland, who was happy for the arrangement regarding the production of Northwood News to continue.

A year later all the data was again re-created and transferred to a more capable Windows PC which gave us compatibility with other machines in case of hardware failure.

In August 1996 we started to include a monthly report from the Northwood Residents’ Association, which has continued to the present day under the banner of Northwood Village Management Committee and includes reports from the Community Partnership and the local police. In May 2008 this will once again evolve into Northwood Parish Council.

Ray remained as Editor until sadly he passed away on 28th November 1998.

I thus took over as Editor and continued to produce it until June 2002 when I had to give it up because of other commitments. The Rev'd Graham Morris, whose Induction was on 24th July 1999, took over the mantle as well as producing Gurnard News for his other Parish. When Graham left in July 2005 I had already offered to resume my previous role because by then I had retired and therefore had more time to devote to its production.

Which brings us to the present day, when Northwood Village has its own website, owned by Northwood Parish Church, and Northwood News has a section within that website.

But throughout its varied history Northwood News has only been able to survive without costing the reader a single penny because of the dedicated army of voluntary helpers involved in its production.

There is a lot of research, telephoning, emailing, chasing and running around to do in order to get all the information assembled into 20 pages, sometimes 24 pages, and thankfully a sizeable proportion is now carried out by email. But in addition to all that, once the masters are produced they have to be printed, collated and folded by a small army of volunteers and distributed to a further slightly larger army of deliverers.

Peter Lambert and Harry Mundell do the printing in an evening, and produce over 1300 copies of each of five or more double-sided sheets. These are then taken to the church where a happy band of about ten people have what they call a ‘Folding Party’, which, after collating all the separate sheets into ordered groups, produces piles of finished Northwood News magazines ready for distribution, all sorted into their respective areas for delivery. The following Sunday the copies are either collected from church or they are taken to each of 30 deliverers, who put them through a total of over 1300 letter boxes throughout the Parish of Northwood. The magazine is produced ten times a year, with combined issues falling in July/August, and December/January because they are periods of lesser activity amongst the majority of local organisations.

Our Parish magazine remains free because of all this voluntary help, but of course there is still considerable cost necessary in the production of the finished article. We have to hire the printing machine, purchase the paper and ink, and all of this is very expensive. So we try to strike a fine balance between edging into profit and making a loss with the help of our wonderful advertisers. We price our advertising charges so that we more or less break even over a 12-month cycle, and we consider that this policy enables us to give rather excellent value.

So if you do ever respond to an advertisement in Northwood News, PLEASE mention that you saw it in Northwood News and thus help our credibility and perceived value!

Of course this value has just recently been enhanced by the advent of the Northwood Village website, as all the advertisements contained within Northwood News can now be viewed by anyone anywhere on the Island, and even across the world, and not, as previously, just within the Parish.

It is our hope that Northwood News will go from strength to strength, and maybe one day we’ll even produce a glossy colour version with a free DVD. Or maybe not. Well, probably not, actually, but one can dream.

Alan Welfoot, Editor.