East Tennessee Episcopalian: Editorial Policy and 2005 issue deadlines

ETE Staff

South East Area (Athens to Chattanooga to North Georgia)

Upper East Area (Greeneville to Tri-Cities to Mountain City)

Middle East Area (Crossville to Rugby to Knoxville to Newport to Gatlinburg)

Three cheers for the readers of the East Tennessee Episcopalian, who bear a lot of responsibility for keeping one another informed of news in their parishes and Episcopal institutions. Your photographs and descriptions of activities – always submitted by the published deadlines, of course – make the newspaper yours.

Much credit for the energy and timeliness found in its pages belongs as well to volunteer correspondents. See below for information about their duties.

Your South East Area Correspondent, Emily McDonald, was born in Bristol, Va., and is a 1963 graduate of the University of Tennessee’s journalism program. She earned her newspapering stripes working for the Houston Chronicle, the Associated Press, the Nashville Banner and the Methodist Publishing House before hiring on at the Chattanooga Times in 1969. When the Times and Chattanooga News Free Press merged in 1999, she joined its staff until she retired.

“I started writing for the Tennessee Churchman while the late Isabel Baumgardner was editor,” she said. “At one point I served on a statewide communications committee for the Diocese of Tennessee.” She recalls two especially memorable events she wrote about: the interim meeting of the House of Bishops in Chattanooga in 1980 and Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie’s visit to Sewanee in 1981.

A member of St. Paul, Chattanooga, where she is a lay reader, chalice bearer and former vestry member and clerk, McDonald updated a detailed history of the parish as part of its sesquicentennial celebration in 2006. She serves as editor of Ecsetera, the quarterly newsletter for the Episcopal Commission of Southeast Tennessee.

If your parish is in the South East Area and you would like notice of or reporting on an event to be submitted to the East Tennessee Episcopalian, contact Emily at 423-622-3714 or ecmcdonald@bellsouth.net.

The Upper East Area and Middle East Area correspondent posts are vacant. To learn which churches are in each area, please visit the church listing page.

The volunteer job of an area correspondent is to be in contact with and report on the Episcopal churches in one of the diocese’s three geographical areas. Volunteers must have some writing background and a keen interest in assembling factual stories and captions and taking crisp, action-oriented photographs.

Correspondents work together with the editor to plan stories, based on journalistic values (and gut instinct). Glancing through the “around the diocese” section of past East Tennessee Episcopalians will show you examples - click to the archive at etdiocese.net/ETE/.

Please note also that initial work will be done on a trial basis, beginning with one's home congregation and then adding nearby churches a few at a time.

Interested? Send samples of your work to Sharon Rasmussen, editor, at editor@etdiocese.net or to East Tennessee Episcopalian, 814 Episcopal School Way, Knoxville TN 37932. Please give your name, e-mail address, phone number, home church and availability for volunteer assignments.

Sharon Rasmussen is communications director of the diocese and a member of the bishop's staff. She reports on diocesan events, edits and produces the East Tennessee Episcopalian every other month, and the bishop's newsletter to clergy and selected lay leaders on a monthly basis; manages this Web site; handles media relations for the bishop; and cares for other communications issues.