What is the Bulletin?
The Tovarishch Bulletin is your weekly news source. Every Friday, we bring you all the important goings-on from around the globe – after all, if we don’t cover it, it isn’t worth covering!
What we cover
We mainly focus on politics, global news and science. We also cover some general interest stories and reviews, as well as running regular competitions for real prizes.
So who writes this garbage?
The Bulletin is produced and distributed by the Tovarishch Society. We currently have a staff of about seven people, but we are always looking for people to submit stories that they think we might want to cover.
The Doctrine
The Doctrine is the document that defines the management structure and overall direction of the Tovarishch Bulletin, as well as many of the processes and procedures that should be followed for complaints, recruitment, area offices, and other situations.
The current version (Doctrine2014) was ratified at the November 2014 General Meeting.
The history of the Bulletin
The Tovarishch Bulletin began a long long time ago (in a galaxy far far away) at 8:10PM (NZST) on Thursday the 13th of March as an inside joke, and the first issue was published the next morning (the 14th).
Since then, the Bulletin has regularly published an issue each week (ish).
For more historical information, check out the "best of" issues at the end of each season - if you have one!
Format and length
The standard Bulletin issue is 12 pages long (including the front and back cover) and is published in black-and-white in an A5 booklet format. However, some issues are longer or shorter than this, and many of the early issues were published entirely in colour. We hope that this will be the case again in the near future.
Special issues
Some issues of the Bulletin are designated "special editions". These issues generally celebrate or remember a holiday, an event, or the beginning or end of a season. They are usually longer than normal.
Specials usually have an issue title listed in the archive list.
Best of the Bulletin
At the end of each season, a "Best of the Bulletin" issue will be published in limited numbers. These issues will not be available online, but if you ask nicely one might be kept for you!
Generally, these issues are around three times as long as usual and include special features and bonus stories. The last one, "Best of Season One", was 28 pages long and had the issue number #023a. See page 8 of Issue #024 for more information on it.
Issue numbering scheme
Each issue has a number in the form season#issue-number [supplement-id]-[release].
Season
Each season consists of 15 standard (non-supplement) issues.
Issue number
The issue number corresponds to the week in which the issue was published. They increase forever and do not roll over when a season finishes.
Supplement ID
Supplemental material released with an issue (e.g. a competition) has an alphabetical ID appended onto the issue number. This is always lowercase. In the past, supplements were issued when a finalized standard issue was released later than expected, and included news from the original publishing date to the actual release date (e.g. issue #003a).
Release number
When an issue is released more than once (i.e. to include revisions), the release number is incremented. It is not usually publicly accessible, as these revisions generally occur before release - however, an example of it being visible is issue #016-2. The printed version was #016, and the website version (incorporating some fixes) was #016-2.
When we release the Bulletin
We generally release the Bulletin each Friday - issues will be printed and distributed to our subscribers in the morning, and will be uploaded to our website by that evening.
The exceptions
Sometimes, the issues will come out on the following Monday. In this case they will still be dated as the Friday, but will contain the news from the weekend as well.
This happens at the start of school terms (i.e. the issue for the last Friday of the holidays will be released on Monday), and sometimes when a special edition (like a premiere or finale) is released.
Where you can find us
We have a few places on the internet that we maintain for people to follow and view the Bulletin.
This website
You obviously know where it is - but here's a link to our website just in case.
Our subreddit
We have a subreddit at reddit.com/r/TovarishchBulletin. We usually post each week's issue on there when it gets uploaded to the site.
Buying advertising space in the Bulletin
You can buy advertising space in the Bulletin from $5 per week. The money raised from this will be used to ensure that we can continue supplying printed copies to all our subscribers for free. The Bulletin reaches over fifty individual subscribers each week.
Just contact us and we can tailor the details to fit your exacting requirements.