Ubuntu – What happened to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter

Thank you for asking this question and I want to apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you or other readers.

I’m the Ubuntu News Team Leader and Chief Editor of the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter.

However, as of the end of last October I had to take a less active roll in the producing UWN due to a house fire and all the fall out that comes with that. Other team members--Elizabeth Krumbach (pleia2) and Nathan Handler (nhandler)--have worked hard to field questions and produce UWN in my absence, but it’s a lot of work as pleia2 even wrote about on her blog.

Prior to October though, the team has needed more volunteers to accomplish covering the scope of the Ubuntu Community. Many people want to help without realizing the time, energy, and effort that goes into making the publication work.

In the last year, we have moved the team into a public IRC channel on irc.freenode.net --#ubuntu-news-- so that we, the Ubuntu News Team, would be working in the open and allow for more “drive-by” contributors with the understanding that not every suggestion will make it into UWN, but stressing that each suggestion is appreciated and wanted.

We asked readers to answer a short survey so the format could be updated based on reader preference. We’ve looked at new ways to offer the news letter in addition to the wiki page and plain text email.

If the process stays the same then it takes upwards of 16+ hours to put the newsletter together and publish it. It is not an automated process nor should it be. It takes someone and or many people to make sure we link to the original stories, that the summaries capture the spirit and meaning of an article in 3 to 4 sentences.

We check spelling, grammar, format, links and more, but we won’t change the authors original writing.

In short, there hasn’t been a newsletter because there hasn’t been people willing to help. Asking the same 3 or 4 people to give up weekends for years is not acceptable either and that’s what was happening and because of that we are looking at ways to keep burn out from happening going forward.

The good news in all of this is a re-launch is being planned and will take place after UDS-O. However, more contributors are needed for every detail of the newsletter and without that UWN will not be a predictable and consistent publication.

Anyone wishing to help with UWN please can contact me or the news team and we can get UWN polished, perfected and reflecting the pulse of the community one week at a time again!