The force behind the City of Houston's popular newsletters.

Cynthia Sax publishes four titles for the City of Houston, but she didn't start life planning a newsletter career. "I did always want to be a writer," she explained. "In high school I won a creative writing contest. But when I got to college 'journalism' didn't seem to be a career option for girls."

So, some years later, she found herself a teacher in a small town in Wisconsin, with kids in school and a bit of a mid-life crisis. "I went back to college and took all the writing courses I could."

She developed a freelance career stringing articles to newspapers--both the Milwaukee papers, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, and The New York Times.

Learned writing on the job

"I literally learned on the job," she said. "In those days you called in your stories to the rewrite desk which might cut them to pieces. I used to retype what was published to lay out alongside what I had written to see what I could learn from what they used and didn't use."

She also worked awhile for the mayor of Milwaukee until a combination of family problems led her to return home to Texas.

"My first assignment for the City of Houston was in the Finance and Administration Department. My responsibility was insuring what they produced was grammatically correct. They had a tendency to publish reports referring to the budget year 'just passed."'

In 1992 Houston's new mayor had campaigned about "lazy city employees" but, once taking office, he in fact found the city has hundreds, thousands, of dedicated, hard-working employees. This led to the establishment of Extra Milers, published six times a year and made up editorially entirely of letters to the City (and now e-mails) praising City employees who've gone above and beyond in their jobs. "I have more letters on file than I could print in the newsletter in five years," Sax said.

Then they added City Savvy, intended to show City workers the scope of their work. "Houston is a huge enterprise," Sax said, "23,000 employees in 21 departments working at 700 sites. The librarians have no idea what the people in the aviation department (Houston has three airports) do and vice versa.

City Savvy was a budget-cut casualty at one point, but the current mayor, who took office in 1998, restored it and it is published quarterly.

Sax also publishes two newsletters on employee benefits, Benefits Pulse for city employees and Benefits Line, which goes to 5,000 retirees. Both are six times a year.

For all these publications Sax has a staff of two reporters (who write 90 percent of the copy) and two designers (one of whom works chiefly on the city web site and intranet).

In addition to the newsletters, Sax and her staff produce annual reports, fliers, brochures, and posters for the City. She is also responsible for the City's charitable giving and employee recognition programs.

Sax does hands-on editing. "We have two rules. In his columns, the mayor can say whatever he chooses. For everything else, we follow The Associated Press Stylebook. Period."

Strict editorial schedule

She explained that they have a timeline system that largely eliminates the missed deadlines and delayed approvals that haunt many organization and corporation editors.

"The mayor's office has two weeks to get us materials. My department director reviews materials in a day. The assistant department director reviews the benefits newsletter copy in 24 to 36 hours. The assistant editors of all departments have the editorial schedules and they know if we don't receive their materials by such and such date, they won't appear in the next issue. We don't have calls from department directors to my department saying, 'Why weren't we in the issue?'"

Sax is a believer in reader-friendly design. "I'll cut copy for white space if I have to. My 23,000 readers are tremendously diverse. I have Ph.D.s, engineers, and the folks who pick up the trash. They all work hard. When they finish, they're tired.

"I want the newsletters to look attractive. Something they'll pick up and look at the headlines, photos, and the first story. I want it to be something they're proud of, something they'll take home with them. Actually, many people tell me they read the whole thing."

"What makes this a pleasant job," Sax concluded, "is that I have the support of the mayor, his communications staff, and my director and assistant director. Also, I've got talented and dedicated staff. No matter how much we want to improve our publications, it's not possible without people who have the skills and desires to make them better."