IN-HOUSE JOURNAL

 The house journal is one of the oldest forms of public relations, with the Americans being pioneers of this medium. As early as the 1840s, Charles Dickens referred to a publication for New England cotton workers. The Lowell Offering (1842), I.M. Singer & Co.’s Gazette (1855) and the Travelers Insurance Companies’ Protector (1865) were all produced for the first time around this period. In Britain, Lever Brothers (now part of Unilever) and the Manchester Co-operative both launched a house journal towards the end of the nineteenth century.

House journals have been given a variety of names, such as newsletters, employee newspapers and company newspapers, but, in effect, they carry out the same function. House journals are private publications and are therefore discussed separately from the commercial press. Over the years they have tended to change from pulpits for employers to preach from to supporting more open forms of management–employee relations.

The typical house journal of the past, an all-purpose affair with lots of photographs of men in suits, giving messages that your organization is a great one to work for, is now more or less moribund.

HOUSE JOURNAL TYPES

There are also two distinct kinds of house journal: internals for staff and externals for outside publics. The two are distinct and should not be expected to serve the dual purpose of serving, for example, employees and customers. House publications are not confined to the world of commerce and industry, even if house journal editors have, in the past, been given the curious title of ‘industrial editors’. In fact, private magazines and newspapers are published by almost every kind of organization, whether it is in the public or private sector, commercial or not-for-profit.

There are basically five types of house journals. Although some of these previously printed publications have converted in whole or part to electronic media, it is not so much the medium but the message that is important, and which medium best suits the function of reaching the target publics.

Ø    The sales bulletin is a regular communication, perhaps weekly, between a sales manager and sales representatives in the field.

Ø    The newsletter is a digest of news for busy readers, e.g. management, technicians. The term  newsletter is sometimes used to describe printed house journals in general. Membership organizations such as the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM), British Franchise Association and others use this as the principal conduit to their membership. In recent years there has been a considerable switch from printed to e-mail newsletters.

Ø    The magazine, which typically contains feature articles and pictures and may be published at monthly or quarterly intervals. It is usually A4 size.

Ø    The tabloid newspaper, which resembles a popular newspaper and contains mostly news items, short articles and illustrations, and may be published weekly, fortnightly, monthly or every two months.

Ø    The wall newspaper is a useful form of staff communication, where the staff are contained in one location such as a factory, department store or hospital.

WHY PUBLISH A HOUSE JOURNAL

Such a publication could be one of the media used by the public relations manager in order to carry out a planned public relations programme that, importantly, includes internal relations. In other words, the house journal should be a meaningful agent of public relations management.

As Dawn Jones of Shandwick International notes: ‘truly successful internal communications turn organizations into intelligent organisms which learn and grow’.

In the past, the house journal provided the means by which a paternal management could preach to the staff, and there are still some journals that are produced that way. A good house journal should be published because management have things to communicate to

employees and in order to generate feedback. This is particularly important where there are staff scattered between different locations, or where mergers and acquisitions are occurring and old and new staff need to know each other. Staff may also want to communicate with one another, or let off steam about problems in the workplace. When reasons such as these are considered, the house journal becomes an important instrument in the process of management–employee relations.

CATEGORIES OF HOUSE JOURNAL

House journals fall into four major categories, grouped by the audience they serve. These categories are as follows:-

                 Journals for Employees and Retirees

                 Journals for Stockholders and Employees

                 Journals for Marketing Staff and Wholesalers of Company Products

Journals for Customers and Members