Local newspaper coverage

[goodoldeagle2]

Way back in 1998, when I wrote my WB Ticket, I included in it a goal of training the leaders in the district I served to be more media savvy.

 

I've been an inactive scouter for about three years now, but I found this forum, and figured I'd try to continue "delivering the promise" and extending my ticket to the folks here.

 

I'm an Eagle Scout and career journalist, and I constantly mull over ways our leaders can get recognition in print in their various communities.

 

So if y'all have any questions for me, please ask. Or if you have found ideas that work well for YOUR units, chime in.

[Laurie]

I've been remiss in not welcoming you to the forums. Welcome!

 

I've a question: what types of stories is the media interested in? It seems that unless it's tragic or controversial, it's not newsworthy, so how does a "good news story" (ordinary Cub events for instance) become newsworthy?

 

TIA

[hops_scout]

Laurie, there are articles all the time in our paper about Cub Scouts. Rarely, though, are there articles about Boy Scouts:(

[Laurie]

hops--not in our papers. Maybe the answer to my question will help someone (oh, you maybe? ) to get the Scouts into the paper as well as the Cubs. I have seen very little, usually just Eagle Scout announcements. There is so much more, and saying this is not meant to minimize Eagle in any way.

[goodoldeagle2]

Thanks for the welcome!

 

A lot regarding coverage depends on the size of the city in which you live, and therefore the size/circulation of the paper that serves your particular community. Sometimes it's harder with bigger papers in bigger cities to get anything in. This is getting better where I live.

 

Tell me some things about the paper where you live, and I might be able to help you with a strategy or two, or three, or four.

[goodoldeagle2]

Thanks for the welcome!

 

A lot regarding coverage depends on the size of the city in which you live, and therefore the size/circulation of the paper that serves your particular community. Sometimes it's harder with bigger papers in bigger cities to get anything in. This is getting better where I live.

 

Tell me some things about the paper where you live, and I might be able to help you with a strategy or two, or three, or four.

[peewee]

I live in a first ring city of Mpls. pop. of approximately 40k. When the boys work on any projects at the local nature center I make sure that I take photos and send it to the local community paper with a short stoy of what we had done. 4 of 5 projects have been printed -- RM

[goodoldeagle2]

Sounds like Roger McCabe has a pretty good relationship with the newspaper where he lives. And he hits on an important point: sometimes you have to do your own reporting. In a scout troop, something like this can be delegated out by the SPL to the troop historian. In scouts or cubs, if you have a parent who is a photography enthusiast, try to coax that parent into accompanying the troop/pack/den to whatever event you want publicized.

 

In a pinch, though, a disposable camera carried by you will do just fine.

 

Good discussion and ideas out there!

[Sturgen]

The owner and editor of the local paper is on the council committee in my neck of the woods and you only see reports in the paper on the positives of scouting maybe six times a year, in a county of 500k, (the paper is the local paper for I would guess about twice that). Not to be pessimistic, but dont hold up to much hope, just keep calling media sources before and after you have an event and perhaps something will happen

[goodoldeagle2]

Sturgen: Does your local paper take items you submit to them that you've written or photos you've taken yourself? That might be worth investigating with the owner/editor of the paper.

[LauraT7]

We have a local (our town only) weekly paper that will pretty much print anything we send them. We also have an area-wide (county plus) daily paper that will take articles, but they edit them alot, or may only print the photo. The trick is to get someone from the troop to put something together and SEND it. the daily paper 'might' send someone out to an event if we call ahead and if it sounds interesting enough.

 

I and my son take alot of photos for the troop - I also counsel photography so the boys are allowed to use my cameras after they have gotten their badge. I have a digital camera and a 35 mmm and we used both. We also often by the throwaway camera (esp the waterproof ones) for the troop and give them to a boy - (we get lots of photos of thumbs and feet - but that is improving with the badgework) However, when taking photos it's good to remember that in the paper they are black and white - so good contrast and lighting are essential to getting something a paper will want to print. With Digital photgraphy, you can often edit them at home to improve them (crop them, fix red eyes, delete trees growing out of people's heads, etc) Many photo editing programs also have an option to change a photo to black and white - you can then have it printed on photographic paper at the store.

 

the thing that frustrates me (and surprises me) is neither of our local papers will take submissions by e-mail or fax, - nor will they take digital photos on a disk. They want them printed. I would think it would be alot easier for them to get the photos as a .JPG file than in print and by mail.

 

anyone know why this would be?

 

Laura

[goodoldeagle2]

Laura:

 

That puzzles me about your paper too, but I think the paper is just trying to cover its collective rear. E-mailed or faxed items can "disappear" into cyberspace due to rare glitches. A hardcopy piece of paper that is hand-delivered is not going to get lost in cyberspace. Hand-delivering an item also gives you the benefit of becoming a familiar face at your newspaper office. I don't know if that will make a difference where you live, but it can't hurt to get on a first-name basis with the folks who work up front.

 

There are a few explanations for why they won't take scanned or digital photos:

 

1. They can't. This may sound funny at first, but there are still some papers that haven't made the jump to digital. I used to work at one of them, and if I had a dime for the number of eyebrows I raised when I told people they couldn't e-mail photos to us, I'd be a rich journalist.

 

2. Digital images not at a high enough resolution. When most of us take digital photos, we like to get the most bang for the buck, so we set the camera on the lowest memory setting to get more images on our camera's memory chip. The result are 72 dpi (dots per inch) images that look great on our computer screen.....but that unfortunately don't translate well when we try to print them. Ask the folks at the paper what their specifications are for the digital images they use. They are likely using images that are 200 or 300 dpi.

 

3. They prefer scanning images using their own scanner. The price of scanners has gone down to the point where a lot of people with home computers can afford to bundle in a scanner with their system. But newspapers and magazines spend big bucks on scanners with a lot of bells and whistles. Some can scan prints, color and b/w negatives, color and b/w slides, etc. And these higher-end scanners produce better images than most of our home models.

 

Just my opinion of course. :-)

[Eamonn]

We are lucky in the district we have two local papers both owned by the same group. They are grear as far as putting in just about anything that is there by the deadline. We also have a daily evening paper and a daily morning paper which is owned by another group. The morning daily has a far bigger circulation. Both will send a photographer out to cover events which are of interest to the larger community. In fact their head photographer is the SM of a troop in the district.

Our DE and the Marketing Chair on the district committee do a good job of letting them know the what, where and when of district events so we do get a fair amount of coverage. At times they will hold a story until they have space. Our Marketing Chair has as a ticket item for Wood Badge given each unit a packet that has all the contact people and some guidelines to help them get more articles in the paper.

Our Sunday paper has local area sections which have their own editor. They seem to want the human interest story, In fact they did a two page article on me. Coming from England and how Scouting is different here. It was nice - They even spelled my name right.

I didn't have much joy with the Morning paper trying to get articles in about the jamboree. But when I spoke to the editor of one of the local papers and said that some of the boys would be the "Hometown Reporter" He was really interested and came to a troop meeting to talk about how to send a story.

It would be great if more of the units would send stuff into the local papers. They prefer E-mail and digital photos, if possible with no more then 3 or 4 people in the photo.They also do printing, I used to give them all of my printing work for the restaurants and put ads in the paper. I think it is important that we support the local business community. The people who work there are the parents of our youth and we do turn to them to help support FOS and other Scouting events.

Our local cable company is good at putting free commercials on the cable channels around the same time as we hold School Sign up night.We got the commercials from the National Office. One local Billboard company is donating space around about the same time. I very nearly wrecked the car the first time that I seen one.

Eamonn

[EagleInKY]

We have a large metropolitan paper and a local county (weekly) paper. We successfully get scout news in our local paper with no problem. They'll only carry 1 or 2 of these "feel good" scout stories a week, so sometimes you get bumped a week or two until they have availability.

 

I submit the stories via e-mail. I have to post the jpg out on the web instead of attaching it. For some reason, their e-mail strips off attachments, it's probably due to spam or virus controls.

[goodoldeagle2]

In addition to new Eagle Scouts, does anyone write up items to submit to the newspapers about adult achievements (Woodbadge, Silver Beaver, Silver Buffalo, Distict Award of Merit, etc.)?