When I was at GA, I participated in a workshop “Successful Public Witness: Planning Newsworthy Justice Events.” This was put together by Janet Hayes who is the Director of Information and Public Witness at the UUA. From this session and others, it was clear to me that there is an interest in public relations but people still feel overwhelmed by the basics. People seem to be looking for some magic bullet. Well, it’s not magic but it is work. It requires some effort on your part to study and learn how these papers operate.

If you have an Outreach, Communications or PR committee, go talk with them. They may have this information and already know all this information. If they don’t, ask them to find out. Hand them this list.

The Easy Stuff 

So let’s start with the easy stuff. Compile all this information in a list.

1. What are the newspapers in your area? Write it down.
2. For each paper:
   1. Get several editions of that paper and review them.
      1. What kinds of articles do they publish that could apply to your congregation? Cut them out and save them as examples and templates.
      2. Who are the reporters on those stories? Write their names down.
      3. Do they have a calendar of events?
   2. How do you submit info for their public calendar? Write it down.
   3. Call the newspaper and find out who covers religion. GET THEIR NAME AND NUMBER and, yes, write it down.
   4. We’ll call that person a little later after you do some more homework.

Have a good story idea

Reporters don’t report stories because you want to publicize some event. Period. Don’t even go there. Anything they do for you is free so be nice, professional, and courteous even when they say they’ll put your article in and don’t or edit it beyond recognition. 

Be authentic. If your congregation really isn’t doing anything, you can’t create something out of whole cloth. But don’t give up! ”Newsworthy” is a subjective term.

A few ideas:

Anything involving children

Nothing gets published faster than anything involving children in the area that the newspaper covers. Here is an article that we saw and adapted for three different newspapers based on three different children who were participating in a concert we were promoting. Obviously you must get permission from the parents and they will usually help you write the article as well.

Children participating in social action events is also newsworthy.

Music events

These are certainly publishable in a newspaper’s calendar. But it may also be a good feature news article as in the case of singer-songwriter Randy Driscoll who performed at our congregation. Randy wrote a song called “What Matters” about Matthew Shepard, the young man who was killed in Wyoming for being gay.

Our choir was planning on performing ”What Matters” and through a coincidence, one of our staff members happened to know her and wondered if wanted to perform the song with her. Things went from there and the choir has performed the song with her several times now in a variety of venues. That made a good story. But they don’t have to be unusual to get press. Local angles also play well.

Social Action Events

If you have visiting speakers who are covering notable topics, let the papers know. But if it is the “sermon” at your service, don’t position it that way. We have had a number of speakers that have received good coverage and attracted many new visitors who initially came because of their topic.

Provide a writeup

We have a template that we use for informing reporters about events. This particular letter gave rise to a good article about the lecture which resulted in half the audience coming from the community outside of our congregation.

• Provide a short write up of the event that is clear and factual.
• Who, What, When, Where, Why and How come first.
• Avoid hyperbole!!!! The greatest!!! Most brilliant!!!! It doesn’t fly. Be objective.
• Provide access to the speaker or musician if possible. The reporter is not going to want your opinion on what the speaker is going to say.
• Be accessible to the reporter. It’s ok to be persistant be remember that they are doing you a favor. Too pushy and you’ll lose a valuable connection.
• Thank the reporter for their time, for a job well done, for everything. If there do happen to be factual errors, be professional and clear about the error. Don’t get emotional. The error should be factual not one of editing preferences.

Ok, Now you can call that reporter

Follow these simple rules and you will get more exposure for your congregation. It’s not magic. It’s just work. Now, after reading this, you can call the reporter to ask them about their interests, deadlines, etc. It’s also an opportunity to briefly float an idea if appropriate. Now make that call!

We’ll get into other aspects of medial relations in another article.