Writing
Articles for Local Newspapers and Newsletters
By Victor Beshir
A great way to reach out to a large number of people
is writing. Some people get scared when
they think about writing, but writing a book is different from writing an
article to a local newspaper, newsletter, or college newsletter because they
don’t require the same level writing skills and talent needed to write a book, national
magazines, and newspapers. Once you have
trained yourself on following a few steps in writing the ideas and topics, the
rest will be easy because you can get help in editing and style. A few years
ago I was talking to an editor in a big newspaper and she told me that she spends
a lot of time going through each article to correct grammar and to refine the style
of article. This shocked me because I thought that everyone that writes to a
big newspaper should already have mastered grammar and writing style. From that day on, I was encouraged to
write. The fear of writing and making
mistakes stops many people from writing, but for us as people who like to
evangelize we need to overcome this fear.
A successful article is not mainly successful because of its grammar or
style, but rather because of the appealing topic, the interesting introduction,
the smooth transferring from one idea to the other, concentration on the theme
of the article, and convincing your reader.
You will be surprised how others may like your writings once you follow
the directions in this lesson.
In today’s world, if we’re serious about evangelistic
efforts, we should include writings to newspapers and magazines in our agenda. Other
religions are very active in this field because the evangelistic benefits from
these writings are so great. As a matter
of fact, some other religions have good contacts with newspapers editors and
send a monthly article. This way they
keep the town aware of their existence, and in each article they just add one
appealing reason on why a person should join them. They do it in such an indirect way that
nobody objects to it, but on the contrary, it attracts people.
You will be surprised to know that newspapers always on the lookout for peoples’ writings to fill their papers. As any other business deals with ideas, newspapers also search for new topics with new ideas to attract readers. They need your articles. Similarly, Colleges’ newsletters also encourage students and others to write articles. One great idea is to establish a good relationship with the editors of the religion section of the local newspapers. This relationship would allow you to publish deep Orthodoxy articles without much opposition. A few years ago, I established a good relationship with the editor of the religion section of a big newspaper, and I sent her a couple of articles. She published them, but after some scrutiny to avoid direct religious invitation, she changed them to be more indirect. When I sent the third one, I used an indirect way to evangelize, thinking that she will catch it and eliminate it. To my surprise, she published the whole article without changing a letter, and put my name as a writer of the newspaper, something I never dreamed would happen.
Writing About Church News:
One of the best ideas for evangelistic writing is
writing about news of the church.
Whenever there is news, write to local newspapers about it. First contact them, tell them about the news,
and ask them to come to talk about it.
When meeting with the writer or the editor, give them a written article
that covers the background of the news or the occasion. Mostly, they will send a writer and a
photographer to cover the news or the event.
From that point on, work with the writer to inject some evangelistic
words or ideas. Remember that the writer
needs help and he/she will welcome your efforts. In the beginning expect some word scrutiny,
but after a while, scrutiny will go away.
What kind of news you need to write about? Here is a
small list:
1- Visit of significant figures: The pope, a bishop that
came for a specific task, a scholar, an artist, a writer, a theologian, a
pioneer, a charity organization, and a cultural organization.
2- Meetings: Committee meetings to arrange for a
specific activity or a project, meeting for priests from different places, or
meeting between different local leaders of different churches.
3- Feasts and Fasting: Advent fasting, Christmas,
Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, Virgin Mary fast, Saint of the church, holy
family flight into Egypt, and the new Coptic year
4- Festivals
5- Charitable days
6- Cultural, Spiritual, and Social events
7- Something new in the church, like an icon holder or
a Coptic icon.
8- Baptism
9- Marriage
10- Ordination
The main idea is not the news, but to use the news as
a vehicle to include evangelism. Having
even one evangelistic thought in an article is worth the efforts. I will give you an example; we had a priest
ordination in our church, so I called the religion editor and told her that we
have an ordination and need coverage.
The first reaction was something like, ‘so, what we have ordinations all
the time. This is not attractive news.”
Then, I realized that I did not do a good job and decided to think about
it. A few days latter I visited her and
said, “Probably I did not explain myself the other day. What we have is a historic event; this is the
first time in the history of our area to witness an ordination of a priest for
one of the oldest church in the world.
Bishops will come from as far as
Amazingly, after the article was published, another
big newspaper editor called me blaming me for ignoring them and not contacting
them to write about the event. Wow!
By the way, I am not very good when it comes to
writing in English, but I write, then I give the article to someone else to
edit before I send it to the newspaper.
Just do one job and let others help you.
You put the ideas in words and mold them. Then delegate the other responsibilities to others.
Other Writings:
To reach out to people, you need to be creative,
especially when it comes to writing.
Once I thought about how to talk about the spirituality of the church
without direct talk-to make it acceptable to a newspaper. So, I wrote an article about visiting
What I am trying to say is to be creative. You can create an appealing article about any
simple thing in the church, our history, about a dialogue, about what we do for
our youth or elders, or our very old liturgies and hymns. I could go on forever. You may tell me that you don’t have that much
information about all the topics I mentioned.
Well, this is not a problem. Just
look for something that is new for someone outside of the church. Once you recognize something, start asking
about it and reading about it. Get deep
into its spiritual meaning and its impact on our life. Then imagine that you’re talking to someone
in front of you, telling then about the idea.
Train yourself on what is best to say first and what is better to say
next. Ask yourself, “Wouldn’t it be better if I started by saying this or I conclude
with this.” Having this dialogue with
yourself until you write something that you are thinking is a good
approach.
Come back to what you wrote in a few days and examine
it again to modify the tone of the words, to make sure of the smoothness from
one idea to the other, to change long wordy sentences into small effective
ones, and to add attractiveness to its lines and paragraphs. If you need help in that, give it to someone
else. Sound too much? It could be in the
beginning, but because of the love of our Lord, we train ourselves, and read
more until we master it. Little by
little, you will notice improvement in your writings. When you get discouraged, consider someone
like me; English is my second language and it took me years to write a correct
simple sentence.
Guideline for Writing to Local Newspapers:
In addition to what I already mentioned above, here
are additional points to discuss:
1- Have an Attractive Topic:
The local newspapers welcome articles about interesting
topics; they are always in search for new topics. In evangelism we already have numerous topics
to write about. So, all you need to do is
to practice how to discover good topics and how to present them. Ask yourself whether or not this would be
something new for someone outside the church, and then work on how to make it
attractive to the readers. Think of the thousands
of commercials about products that you would normally not pay any attention to,
but the commercials make them very appealing.
Someone gathered information about them and thought about how to
represent them in an appealing way to the viewers.
2- Put evangelism inside other topics:
Once one college was celebrating “Black History
Month,” and I decided to write an evangelistic article for the occasion. So, I choose a title, “African Americans
Should Be Proud of Africa.” When the readers
see the title, they think that I am writing about
What I am trying to say is to write about a topic that
doesn’t look like evangelism in order for your article to be published. No newspaper will publish an article that
evangelizes people, except if it was a religious one. But, the secret is to pick up another topic
and carefully insert your evangelistic message inside the topic.
What I am saying about articles could be easily adapted
to presentations or speeches in universities and communities. You can say all what you need to say but
under another umbrella and say it indirectly.
A few years ago I was taking a counseling course. The teacher asked everyone to give a
presentation about a topic related to counseling. A Muslim lady in her presentation started by
saying I am a teacher in an Islamic school and to let you be familiar with what
I am saying let tell you a few things about Islam. Then this few things took about fifteen minutes
talking about Islam, as if she gave information, but in reality in each
sentence she was comparing Islam to Christianity and making Islam superior to
Christianity without mentioning the word Christianity. Everyone sat silently listening to her words.
What I am trying to say is you can lecture and say
everything you want if you put it under an acceptable topic title and if you
present it as information, as history, or as anything without saying the word
evangelism directly. This lady said everything she dreamed of saying, even to
the point of attacking all the she would like, but in a way that did not cause
any anger of others.
3- Have a catching title.
The readers don’t have the time to read every article
in the newspaper, so they have to be selective.
Catching titles grab their attention.
So, pick up an exciting title for your article. Unless the title attracts the readers’
attention, your article will never be read.
4- Have an appealing opening paragraph:
If the reader likes your title, he/she will read the
first paragraph. If the first paragraph
was attractive and catches the reader’s attention, then you win, because the
reader most likely will read the rest of your article.
This opening paragraph should create curiosity by
asking questions or throw an amazing fact that you will talk about. You may make the reader laugh in your first
paragraph to relax him or her and make your article a pleasant one. Most American preachers start their sermons by
saying a joke. When people hear the
joke, they laugh, get relaxed, feel the sermon will be pleasant, and continue
to listen.
5- Write with the reader in mind:
The approach to writing is to think as the reader
thinks. Most readers of newspapers
prefer simple language. Imagine that the reader is sitting next to you and
you’re trying to explain your topic to them.
Ask yourself what I should do to keep the reader’s
attention while they read my article.
How can I make my words and sentences interesting enough to get the
reader’s attention? One of the magazines
described my “Coptic Roots” book as “The book that is attractive in form and
style and will hold the reader of any age till he finishes it.” You need to keep the reader’s attention
during the entire article. Use questions
to keep their curiosity. Let the readers
always feel like they want to continue reading to discover the answers and
facts about what you have shown as being important for them to know.
Ask yourself, what could be important for the
readers. What would they be looking for
in my article that is important in their life?
Mostly, in newspapers’ articles, there is only one idea you can talk
about at a time, so you need to concentrate on that idea in the article.
Another technique you can use is to keep the reader
amazed. People like adventures because they like to know what will happen. Keep
the level of amazement high. For
example, I always keep the reader amazed at how the Coptic Orthodox Church
preserves the original faith and worship for two thousand years without
modifications. The reader would say, “Wow.” This “wow” would keep him or her
reading.
You may also present your facts as shocking
information. For example, when African
Americans read the article I wrote about
Especially because this was a different view than the
view they may have heard from Muslims. I can imagine that their mouths would be opened
widely from amazement. If you can maintain
this feeling, you win.
Remember, any topic could be boring or very interesting. You can imagine how teenagers would hate to
read about parents. This is a very boring
topic for them. But how about if I start
an article with a title like, “How to win over your parents and get all you want
from them?” I am sure that I will
attract some teenagers, if not all, to read this article.
In the same article about parents, if I write, ’you
need to do the following: 1- Be obedient to your parents 2- Be respectful, etc.,
the teenagers would throw away the article.
However, if I represent some alluring psychological facts, they would continue
to read. For example, I can say, ‘how to
use your parents love to win them over? “Then I explain what loving parents entails, what influences it, and how to win that
love? I say exactly the same things
that could be very boring but in a fascinating way.
By the way, the same thing could be said about
teaching in Sunday school. You can apply
these thoughts on Sunday school classes to get the attention of your students.
6- Avoid being academic
Don’t throw a flood of information in a scientific
way. Most people hate to read scientific
articles or books. Instead pick up a few
examples and present them not in scientific ways but in a captivating way. Also, don’t use scientific jargon. Instead use everyday language to say what you
like to say.
7- Switch to evangelism
Once you reached the heart and mind of the reader,
then throw in your evangelistic topic. However, make it in an indirect
way. You need to learn how to go back
and forth between your topic and evangelism smoothly. You say what draws people into the article
and smoothly switch to evangelism to say something before going back to your
topic again. Evangelism doesn’t mean preaching. You can evangelize by stating facts, by
describing the effect of the church on people’s life, by giving information
that lead people, or by using logical argument.
For example, you can say, “As our bodies get hungry for food, our souls
get hungry to other kinds of food.” Then
get back to your topic. Switch again to evangelism to describe how entering an
Orthodox Church gave you peace and made your soul feel happy.
8- Make sure the article will keep people thinking:
A successful article is one that makes you think long
after you have finished reading. After
two months of writing an article in a big newspaper in my city, I was visiting
a dentist for the fist time. When he
discovered my name, he started talking to me about my article. This means the article stayed with him long
after it was published.
9- Speak to their hearts:
Gently touch the reader’s heart. You speak to their brains and leave a mark on
their hearts. Touching hearts usually
happens by talking about realities and a lack of peace, joy, happiness, love,
or deep spirituality. Touching the needs
of the human soul usually leaves a trace in their hearts. You need to say how the church fulfills their
needs or how the gospel did that in a certain area or time.
10- Pray
Prayers should start before writing and continue long
after the article appeared in the newspaper.
Only the Holy Spirit can open the hearts of people and draw them to the
Lord. All that I mentioned above are
just channels the Holy Spirit can use.
But the channels are useless without Him. We do our best to present the best that we
can offer for Him to use. Review
How about if your English is not good?
It is a well known fact that there are people who work
as editors, their job is to edit the work of others. That reveals a fact that not all who write
have a good command of the language. Plus
it is always good to have someone double check your work after you have
finished. As I mentioned above, the editor in a newspaper edits most of the
work he/she receives. Again, think of the people that write for newspapers and
the fact that they also need editing. Therefore you should not be
discouraged.
In addition, Most of the famous people who write a
book about their life hire a writer to write the book for them. Nothing is wrong with giving the article to
someone else to edit it. So, being not
good at English writing is not an excuse, since you can let someone else edit
your writing.