Media outlets are businesses just like any other. As a result, the media must provide stories that are important, detailed and interesting in order to maintain customers. For this reason, an important but potentially dull public policy story must take an arduous journey to get some form of media coverage. At a recent panel discussion at the Community Media Workshop’s annual Making Media Connections conference, Cornelia Grumman of the Chicago Tribune and David Schaper of radio station WBEZ explained the best ways to get generally unexciting yet important stories into the media.
As a reporter for the Tribune, Cornelia Grumman understands the inherent problems with a newspaper. Familiarization with the quirks and shortcomings of the print media may very well be the first step to getting an article published. The more you know about your disadvantages, the more you can do to combat them. Read the rest of this entry »
Are Chicago’s Latino-serving nonprofits “too shy or too buena gente” when it comes to seeking news coverage and editorial board meetings? That was one question Gerardo Cardenas of Contratiempo posed to our panel during a meet and greet that featured Gerardo with Tony Martinez of Telemundo Chicago, Fabiola Pomareda of La Raza, Teresa Puente from Chicanísima blog, and Tania Unzueta of RadioArte.
The topic, along with how to make news in the community and quite a few other questions, was hotly debated by the panelists and about 75 folks this afternoon at the National Museum of Mexican Art. Two nice bits of news at the event:
Vocalo and RadioArte jointly announced at the event that the former is sharing its HD signal with RadioArte and the two will collaborate on producing some content. Both stream online but Vocalo sharing its stronger signal will boost the audience for both stations by adding RadioArte’s public affairs, rock en Español and other content to its lineup. (Check the news release here or in Spanish here).
Tony Martinez of Telemundo Chicago reported that the station won a 2009 Emmy for “Outstanding Achievement for Alternate Media/New Media Interactivity” for Tu Voz which is the station’s online, phone bank and related services for connecting with its audience members, helping them with immigration, health or other issues they may face. Read the rest of this entry »
After several months of relative calm in the Chicago media landscape (with thankfully few layoffs), activity has picked up significantly in the last few weeks, with lots of announcements, many of which strike us as very promising developments for the future of news coverage in Chicago. Several of the announcements involve the creation of actual new outlets altogether, staffed at least in part with former daily newspaper folk. Below we will try to cover all the changes that have occurred:
First off, the Sun-Times has gotten a new owner/savior in Mesirow Financial’s Jim Tyree. He and his investor group seem willing to pour resources into the long-starved daily. Here’s hoping that they succeed. Read the rest of this entry »
Pitching a story to a blogger on the Internet is a different animal than pitching to a print or broadcast reporter. Unlike the “traditional” media world, on the blogosphere you don’t get to leverage your verbal agility to establish a relationship with a reporter over the phone first, and then ask if they’d like to see your press release. And you certainly can’t spam World Wide Web bloggers with a single, impersonal press release that you’ve already emailed to the whole wide world.
While traditional media and the blogosphere both rely on the integrity of honestly forged personal relationships, on the blogosphere more than anywhere reputations are built around endorsements by others: specifically, vouching from supportive bloggers and positive comments submitted by a community of interested readers. If your blogger pitches hit the mark, a buzz of third-party vouching can develop, where bloggers and their readers begin to debate your message among each other, with little additional effort needed by you. When that happens, you can even start pointing print and broadcast reporters to the hubbub around your message on the Internet, if they haven’t found it already. Read the rest of this entry »
By Gordon Mayer, vice president Community Media Workshop
1. Make Your Own List
Personalize this directory to make it work for you. Make sure to write your own notes in the margins and put your most important contacts in a personalized list—unless there are more than 50 of them, a spreadsheet program such as Microsoft Excel should be fine.
Your personalized list is more important than ever in the era of mass layoffs at news organizations and everyday changes in which online news publications cover our organizations and issues. It’s simply not possible to craft a new list of print, broadcast, and online journalists from scratch each time you plan a media outreach campaign. Likewise, a media list allows you to keep track of journalists who have covered you in the past and are familiar with your work—and if more than one person in your organization works with reporters, it can be a good spot to keep track of who contacted which journalist most recently. But make sure one person is responsible for maintaining the list… that way you’ll know who to hold accountable for keeping it up to date! Read the rest of this entry »
By Gordon Mayer, vice president Community Media Workshop
To get a story in the media, you can’t rely solely on the written word; you can’t merely send a fax or a press release. You also must “pitch” your stories through phone calls to selected editors and reporters.
As difficult as it may seem, “pitching” your stories in this way is necessary to getting media coverage. Phone calls humanize and personalize your stories, so if you have a newsworthy story you believe in, get on the phone and tell the media about it.
Set aside time right after you have sent off your media alerts or press releases to make phone calls to those journalists you really must reach. Making “cold” calls to people you don’t know can be difficult, but most reporters and editors don’t and shouldn’t mind getting them; they depend on and encourage citizens to phone in story tips. Here are some tips to make this task easier. Read the rest of this entry »
With the rise of online news, traditional news has taken a huge hit in audience and circulation numbers in recent years, but in a major media market like Chicago, it is still the place where, yes, millions of people go for information. Just take a look at these numbers: Chicago Tribune - 414,590 average daily […]
May is also Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. Having special months to celebrate the achievements and heritage of Asian Pacific Americans, to bike, to write poetry, and more may not seem like much, however, these months get folks excited, talking, and goading each other into action. I mean, I have been looking at my girlfriend Kate’s gorgeous Colorado m […]
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