[cma-l] Do you have a good relationship with your local press?

[Ulla]

Hi,

I have done some work experience at the Edinburgh Evenign News (Johnston 
Press) as part of my journalism course, and it definitely helps if you send 
them good, focused and poignant press releases including easy- to-reach 
contact details of possible and competent interviewees with mobile phone 
numbers, emails and stationary phone; and to have a good hook or news angle 
in it, which enables them to sell more papers.

During the work experience, it became clear to me, that most of the news items 
included were really the ones the journalists had to spend least time on and 
which were easy to include into the paper with just pick'n mix out of the 
press release and reformat. 
There seem to be quite a lot of job cuts going on in mainstream journalism at 
the moment so that any topic which would require lots of time, attention and 
effort has a worse chance to make it into a newspaper edition. 

It might be good to get in touch with your local NUJ National Union of 
Journalists - there might be someone there who might be able to help you to 
prepare a story in a way the paper would print it, maybe a freelance 
journalist or a student or so. 
 
The other point is trying to hit as many news values in your press release or 
story about your community radio station as possible. News values are the 
criterias which determine how much prominence a story is given in the media.

For more about news values, read e.g. Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_values
or Galtung and Ruge (1965):
http://www.cultsock.ndirect.co.uk/MUHome/cshtml/media/nvdetail.html

So if you for example have a celebrity in your station, such as the American 
president drops by, or something weird and wonderful happens, such as a 
yodelling contest for three-legged dogs, even your local rival can't ignore 
reporting about it!


Hope this helps a little bit. 
Ulla

On Wednesday 12 Sep 2007 12:29, CMA-L wrote:
> Fwd:
>
> From: Phoenix FM <sales at phoenixfm.co.uk>
>
> Hi Everyone
>
> Just wondered if other stations have the same problem as we do, that our
> local press will not feature us at all, unless we pay for it of course.
> If many of you do have the same problem, which I think you might as our
> local press is owned by Johnston Press who owns the majority of local
> papers.
>
> Is there anything that we can do as a group to combat this problem?
>
> Thanks
> Phoenix Radio
> Halifax
>
>
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