any advice for trying to print a small newspaper/newsletter?

[Peter Flynn]

On 21/02/2020 00:58, Christopher W Ryan wrote:
> I am on the board of trustees of our local public library. 
> Traditionally, the two libraries in our town produce and mail, to all 
> the households in our town, a summer newsletter/newspaper. Roughly 4 
> pages, but on one larger sheet of paper, folded in the middle.  In 
> color. Here is an example:
> 
> http://gfjlibrary.org/TOUNewsletters/2019TOUFlyer.pdf

Is that printed on Ledger paper and folded once to Letter size?

> Staff writes the content, and then we've traditionally used a
> commercial art/design/printing firm.  In the interest of our budget,
> any thoughts on how I might do this in LaTeX, generating a pdf, and
> then we'd just have to pay for the printing?  Any packages or
> strategies you'd recommend? Anyone else done something similar?

Given that particular design, yes certainly that could be done in LaTeX.

If that was a once-off design, then the LaTeX would need to be re-done 
from scratch next year when the design changes. You would need a 
designer aware of LaTeX's abilities and limitations to do each new 
design (and pay them), and someone with a fairly deep knowledge of LaTeX 
to oversee the production (you? or someone bought in).

On the other hand, if that design is kept for a number of years, then it 
could be written as a document class, which would massively simplify the 
production each year. You would need that someone with that good 
knowledge of LaTeX to produce the document class, and pay them, but 
after that it could be filled in each your by you or your colleagues 
each year with just a working knowledge of LaTeX and the ability to read 
the documentation and understand how it works.

IMNSHE this works when there is a LaTeX evangelist (you?) capable of 
overseeing the project, and possibly even doing the production.

The most obvious limitation is that if your colleagues start insisting 
on certain material being included that there is no room for, you need a 
protocol for explaining that four pages means four pages and not five 
:-) All kinds of pressure may appear, like avoiding pressure from those 
unaware of how type works to shrink or expand chunks of it to fit where 
it was never intended to, which breaks the design. These are not really 
typographic problems but small-p-political office problems about who 
gets to call the shots.

Peter