remember newspapers and magazines are actually struggling to find stories! they actually do want to know.
jema
Not where I come from, they wait for the stories to drop on their desks (complacent and boring Essex Chronicle - who I work for). We need to put the stuff in front of them.
Nettie's dead right. Local newspapers in particular are often guilty of laziness, which makes them ripe for careful exploitation. All too often they're run on a shoestring budget with a largely trainee staff who don't have the time or the contacts to go out and find out what's happening, so they depend on the press release and the weekly police and fire checks to fill the pages.
All of which means that if you've got something to say, tell them. Read the paper to get a feel for the sort of local angles that ring the right bells, then send in a pithy press release about what you're doing that rings those bells. Keep it short and pithy (if you can't get their interest in 250 words, don't bother), include a couple of decent quotes and contact details and then follow up with a phone call to the newsdesk early in the week and you stand a good chance of getting your story in. And remember, people stories and pictures will always stand more chance than issue stories and pictures, so keep it personal.
Me? Like Catholicism, journalism's something I gave up for Lent some years back. I'll do you a how-to guide to press releases in the next day or so when the mixer's done the next batch of lime plaster. Meanwhile, it's back to being the Limestone Cowboy...
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