Published: September 12, 2008 10:48 am      

Michael O'Connor: So you want to be in the newspaper, again

A club, school or some other organization decides to have an event. The first thing someone says is, “Hey, we should put that in the newspaper.”

Always a good idea. Depending on the study you look at, the number of people who look at a newspaper varies, but all the studies agree that more than one person will have a look.

Papers are perused at the stores, when we really wish the reader would purchase it. They may be placed in a business or restaurant, where several people will look through it. And many subscriber households will have more than one occupant.

If our circulation is, say, 6,000, and three people look at each paper, you have a potential audience of 18,000 people.

So, the group seeking publicity tends to do one of two things.

First, they talk to the person who’s considered to be the writer and ask him or her to write something up and send it to us. Second, someone is deputized to call us and ask us to cover the event.

Let’s work backward.

We’d love to cover all the events that happen in Johnson County, but we can’t. We have eight people in our newsroom, two dedicated to sports. Like any other business, we have to be careful of our expenses, so we can’t work employees too many hours. So we have to make choices.

Of course, people often disagree with the choices we make, but we do the best we can. And we can’t ever promise we’ll cover your event because we don’t know what may happen that day. The best laid plans and all that.

What should you do? By all means call us, and we’ll see what we can do. But have someone in the organization take photos, write up a short description of the event, and send it to us. We’ll work it in as we have space.

If your group chooses to send us a release to inform readers about an event, keep in mind a couple of things I failed to mention last time.

One is that you really don’t need to say “everyone is invited,” or words to that effect. We assume that if you ask us to publish an item, it’s open to the public. Of course, some events may be limited to certain groups or age levels. If so, clearly state that in the release.

Another thing to keep in mind is that relying on one single medium to spread your message is risky. There’s a reason why major products advertise in more than one medium. Despite what you hear people saying, mass media are not magic bullets that always hit their targets. Readers go on vacation, viewers take breaks during commercials, and listeners may be channel flippers.

A reminder, e-mail is the best way to communicate with us. Copying the text from an electronic document is easier and more accurate than typing in handwritten and faxed stories. We can scan some printed or typewritten documents, but again there’s a greater likelihood of error. We prefer the DOC and RTF formats, but TXT will work as well. Send pictures in JPG, JPEG or TIFF format. If that’s all Greek to you, enlist the aid of a computer savvy friend or a teenager. Youth have grown up with technology and almost any of them will know what the file formats are.

By all means, start with us. We have the best reach in the county. Just remember to give us plenty of time to publicize your event.



Michael O’Connor can be reached at editor@trcle.com.