Alex Wilcock’s post about how to get covered by Doctor Who magazine reminds me of an enjoyable and long lunch I had with the editor of one of the local weekly papers back in the days that I was a PPC.
Amongst other things, I asked him what I could do to get in the paper more: in essence, how could I make his and my life easier. A lot of these seem blindingly obvious, but not everyone does them:
- Understand and work to the paper’s timings. Understand the cycle that the paper works to: when the main stories are decided, when the deadlines are, when the paper gets put to bed. Make sure that you get your stories to the editor in time. Once the basic shape of the paper has been decided (which can be a few days in advance of print deadlines), your story won’t get in unless it’s unusually strong.
- Provide a large number of diverse stories. It’s partly a numbers game. An editor is looking for a range of stories to make an entertaining and interesting paper. You can’t guess what other stories they will have and what type of stories he or she will be looking for to fill up their paper. I once worked with an Italian with a rather colourful love life: when I asked him how he managed it, he told me:
My secret is that I just ask more women than anyone else.
It’s a bit like that with stories in the local paper – provide more stories and you’ll increase your hit rate.
- Make them relevant to the paper. A local paper generally wants local stories. The more locally relevant and specific the better. Find out if there are any types of coverage that the editor wants to improve – and do what you can to help!
- Make your news releases interesting – especially the subject line and first paragraph. Journalists will scan the subject line and first paragraph of your press release to decide whether to do anything with it – so make sure they are good. Try to make it the kind of story you might actually want to read yourself. Provide vivid, brief quotes. If you provide a photograph, make sure it’s good quality.
- Make your news release easy to use. Don’t send it as an attachment in Word, send it in open email. If your local paper tends to write 250 word articles, don’t send a 500 word press release. Include all relevant contact details. If you have one, attach a good quality digital photograph – preferably at the original resolution of your digital camera (certainly not reduced or compressed).
- Provide advance notice of events. Sounds obvious, but we weren’t doing it. Provide as much advance notice as possible.
- Send it to the right person. Find out who does what and send your story or photograph to the right person.
Other things I’ve found to work include:
- Piggyback big stories. When you know there’s a big story and you have something interesting to say, it’s worth sending in a press release with a brief quote that they can re-use.
- Don’t worry if you think the paper is biased against you. In most cases, your opponents think exactly the same thing. It’s not the job of the local newspaper to be a podium for local politicians.
Comments?
