SUNRISE EDITORIAL POLICY
Sunderland is a young, university city. An exciting place to live, work, study, visit and invest in. A place where quality of life goes hand in hand with quality of environment. The city is committed to a green, sustainable future for its residents, maximising its fantastic natural environment and its record for embracing new technology.
Sunrise provides an essential platform for communicating with city residents,
however it is also used as a marketing tool and sent to businesses, key decision makers and Sunderland’s world-wide ambassadors.
In order to ensure it interests and informs its target audience, and falls in line with the Sunderland Image Strategy the publication needs to highlight the quality and quantity of a range of services provided by the Council and other partners.
Its design, layout and content should always aim to;
· communicate with and engage with residents right across the city
· encourage more people to take part in and attend leisure activities
· raise awareness of breadth of leisure activity across the city
· build on Sunderland’s brand values of life-enhancing, smart and balanced
· involve and engage residents in Houghton, Hetton, Washington in their city
· encourage people to come to the city to visit, work, study, live, invest
· emphasise Sunderland’s coastal assets and what it offers as a positive outdoor environment for both living and leisure
· demonstrate Sunderland’s joint approach to development of the city
· raise funding through advertising/sponsorship for development of the publication, from external and internal sources
· promote public services and how to access them
In order to achieve these aims, all content should adhere to the following key principles which have been developed following consultation with local residents through a series of focus groups and will be managed by the editorial panel, a group consisting of communications professionals and senior management who will meet prior to the start of work on each issue.
1. All feature articles must be forward looking and include information which readers can use.
2. All articles must be relevant to all residents.
3. The content of the publication must embrace diversity in all of its forms.
4. The quality of news and photography must always be of the highest standard.
5. The publication must adopt a positive approach to promoting all parts of the city.
6. The publication must promote the principles of the Sunderland image strategy.
7. All articles must adhere to the tone and style of the publication, i.e be written in a way which is both interesting and informative to the reader and be people focused where possible
8. Sunrise is not a vehicle for statutory notices or high-level corporate information. Where strategic and corporate information needs to be disseminated, all other methods of communication should be considered.
9. Appropriate consideration must be given to all articles or topics submitted for publication, but the editorial judgement rests with the editorial panel. Where an item is rejected for publication, the editor should give the rationale behind the decision and advise where articles might be placed more effectively in other appropriate publications or suggest alternative methods of communication.
10. The editor’s decision is final.