Newsroom
How to plan, build and publish an edition of Transmissions.
What this replaces
The newsletter used to be an email: laid out in Mailchimp, with every graphic cut to fit a 600-pixel email table. Now the newsletter is a page on our own site, and the email is a postcard pointing at it.
What that changes for you day to day:
- Artwork is used at full size. No more re-exporting for email widths.
- Every edition keeps a permanent, linkable home. The archive builds itself.
- A typo is a one-field fix — change it and it's live. No resend, no reissue.
- Members and the wider culture list read one edition. You mark individual sections members-only rather than building two newsletters.
A month in the tool
| When | What happens | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Editorial meeting | Start the edition, pick sections, assign people and dates | Punch list |
| Through the month | Writers fill in their own sections; you watch the board | Punch list → Build |
| Week of | Read it as a reader would; fix what looks wrong | Preview |
| Send day | Publish. It's live immediately. | Publish button |
Starting an edition
Hit Start an edition
You need four things: a slug, an edition number, a title and a publish date.
The slug is the web address
Use 2026-09 for September 2026. It becomes
transmissions.outofofficegarage.com/#/2026-09 and never changes once people have the link,
so pick it deliberately.
Audience
Both is almost always right — it's the whole point of one edition serving two lists. Use Member or Culture only when an edition genuinely isn't meant for the other group.
A new edition starts in planning. Nothing is public until you press Publish — readers get a "not found" if they somehow guess the address.
The punch list
This is the editorial meeting, written down. Every section you add appears here with three editable fields: who it's assigned to, when it's due, and where it's got to.
| Status | Means |
|---|---|
| todo | Agreed, nobody on it |
| assigned | Has a name against it |
| drafting | Being written |
| submitted | Writer says it's done |
| approved | Editor is happy |
Other work underneath is for everything that isn't an article — shoot a header graphic, edit the track photos, proofread the whole thing. Tick it off when it's done.
The chips at the top show open items per person, so you can see at a glance who is carrying too much. A section past its due date turns red with the number of days.
If someone else is working at the same time, hit Refresh to pull in their changes. The page doesn't update by itself.
Sections & layouts
Add a section gives you a set of starting templates — Editor's Note, Member Profile, Field Report, Event Recap, Merch, and so on. They're only a starting point; every field stays editable, and the type is just a text label that shows in the margin next to the article.
Layouts
| Layout | Use it for |
|---|---|
plain | Words only, or words with photos placed inline. Editor's Note, sign-off. |
feature | Long pieces. Full-width photos, pull quotes, photo grids. Profiles and field reports. |
split | Copy left, one image right. Event reminders, polls. |
split-flip | Image left, copy right. Alternate with split so consecutive sections don't look identical. |
Use the ↑ ↓ arrows on a section header to reorder. The numbers down the left of the published page follow automatically.
Writing the body
The body box is one line per block. A normal line is a paragraph. A line starting with
a keyword and a | does something specific.
That is the whole format. Here it is working — the left is exactly what you type into the body box, the right is what comes out:
Somehow my 2001 Carrera was invited to park alongside a genuine 911 R.
The lineup did not feel real. A street-legal 962. Carrera GTs. Singers. Cars you usually only see online, parked on gravel.
Over 200 million — easy.
Grateful to have been there.
0 is the first image on the section.The buttons under the box insert each directive for you — you don't have to memorise them.
Plain lines can contain a | perfectly safely. Only a line that
starts with a known keyword followed by | is treated as a directive.
Formatting inside a paragraph
**bold**→ bold*italic*→ italic[text](https://…)→ a link- A line starting
-→ a bullet.1.→ a numbered item. Consecutive lines join into one list, and bold, italic and links all work inside them.
Images
Drag images onto the drop zone in a section, or click to choose. They upload straight away.
The numbers matter
Each image shows a blue number. That is what body directives refer to. The first image
is 0, not 1. wide|0 means "the first image, full column width".
Removing an image renumbers the ones after it. If you delete
image 1, the old image 2 becomes 1 — and any directive still saying 2 now points at the wrong
picture or nothing at all. Check your directives after deleting.
White-background artwork is handled for you
Our artwork comes from different places — in-house and outside agencies — so some of it arrives on a white background and some on a dark one. The published page is dark, and a white graphic dropped straight onto it looks like a mistake.
You don't have to think about this. Every image is checked as it uploads, and anything on a white or near-white background is automatically given a deliberate white plate with generous margin, so it reads as an inserted print plate rather than an accident. The card shows what was detected.
If you disagree, the Plate / No plate button forces it either way and your choice always wins.
Best format to ask for: transparent background (PNG). A transparent export sits directly on the dark page with no plate and no fuss — it always looks right. White-background artwork still works fine automatically, so you don't need to chase anyone; transparent is just the better result when you can get it.
Linking an image
Info on any image has a Link to field. Fill it in and clicking that image goes there — a merch drop, an event page. Leave it empty and clicking opens the image large instead, with arrows through the rest of the images in that section.
It is one or the other, never both. An image that might navigate or might zoom depending on where you click is worse than either behaviour on its own.
Alt text
Info on any image sets alt text, caption and credit. Alt text is what someone using a screen reader hears, and what Google reads. It's worth thirty seconds.
Member-only sections
Set a section's Visibility to Members only. Everyone gets the same link; people who aren't signed in see a locked panel where that section would be, and the words never reach their browser at all.
This is what lets one edition serve both lists. Put the members' business in member-only sections and send everyone the same link.
Preview & publish
The Preview tab is the real published page in a window — not an approximation. What you see is exactly what a reader gets. Desktop and Phone buttons switch the width; check both, most people read on a phone.
Publish makes it live immediately. If sections still have no copy, you'll be told which before you confirm — you can publish anyway.
Publishing also makes this edition the one the front page shows.
Made a mistake? Fix the field and save — the change is live at once, because the page is drawn from the database every time. If something bigger is wrong, Unpublish pulls it from the archive. Nothing is deleted.
Directive cheat sheet
Every directive below, with the line you would actually type on the left and what it renders as on the right.
Just type a lineA paragraph. Most of what you write is this — no keyword needed.The lifts were full by eight and the coffee was gone by nine.
lede|The opening paragraph, set with a drop cap. One per section, at the top.He bought it at nineteen and has never once considered selling it.
- bulletA line starting with - becomes a bullet. Consecutive lines join into one list. Use 1. for numbered.Coming up:
- Cold Start DJ Set — May 26
- Cars and Coffee with Shinola
- M1 Track Day
quote|A large italic pull quote with a blue hairline down the left. Use it for the line you want people to remember.You do not own a car this long. It ends up owning you.
stamp|A small uppercase label. Good for a date or a location dropped into the middle of a piece.bleed|0Image 0, edge to edge — it runs past the text on both sides. The biggest move available; use it to open a feature.The gates opened at eight and it did not stop for six hours.
wide|1Image 1, wider than the text column but still inset from the edge. A step down from bleed.Noah shot most of the day from the inside of turn three.
float|2Image 2 sits to the right and the text wraps around it. Good for a portrait beside the copy.Sergey wrapped the roof of his own Altima outside his parents’ house, with no garage and no equipment.
grid|1,2Images 1 and 2 side by side, equal size.Two Bugattis turned up, which nobody had planned for.
grid3|1,2,3Three across. Good for a run of detail shots that work better together than alone.dialogue|A back-and-forth exchange, ruled off top and bottom. Separate the speaker from what they said with ::, and each turn from the next with ||.Numbers are media positions — the labels on the image cards in the Build tab. The first image on a section is 0.
Questions
Can I break the live site?
Not really. Only Publish makes anything public, and Unpublish reverses it. Deleting a section is the one thing that can't be undone — you'll be asked to confirm.
Do I have to finish in one sitting?
No. Save a section whenever; come back whenever. Editions can sit in planning for weeks.
Someone else edited the same section.
Last save wins — there's no merge. Assign one owner per section on the punch list and this doesn't come up.
Why doesn't the newsletter go out when I publish?
Publishing puts the edition on the web. Sending the email is a separate step, on the Send tab — and deliberately so. Publishing is reversible in one click; an email is not reversible at all. It also means you can publish to check the edition live, share the link, or fix a typo without mailing everyone each time.
Can I change an edition's address after publishing?
You can, but don't. Any link already shared — including one in a sent email — stops working.
Not built yet
So you know what to expect rather than hunting for it:
- Creating audiences and tags in Mailchimp. The Send tab reads whatever is already there and shows it as a dropdown, but it will not create a new audience or tag for you.
- Event and merch sections that fill themselves in from the events and shop databases. Type the details in by hand for now.
- Dragging images to reorder. Delete and re-upload, and fix the directive numbers.
- Read statistics per article. Nothing is tracked.