Publicity and Scouting

[rjcluvvt]

Just curisous, I live in a small time community with a pretty popular local new leader spanning 2 counties and 2 cities, about every 2 months there is a little blurb in the news paper about our council wheter it be who got thier Eagle, eagle projects, service projects, scouting for food, or the board of superviosrs denying our requests to renovate our property. I was curious to how much publicity your council is getting and wheter or not it helps or renders your image in the community

[falcon93]

I am a scoutmaster in a small town, and we put everything we do in the paper. in 8 months I have grown from 7 scouts in the troop to about 12 as of last night. Publicity helps, I would focus on publicity for the individual unit.

 

 

[Cubmaster-Fred]

I am a cubmaster and we are also from a small town with a small local paper that puts just about everything we do in the paper. Our council very rarely has anything in the paper.

 

I also agree that it has helped us to not only gain new boys but leaders and help from local businesses

 

JMHO

CMF

[cliffgolden]

 

I live in a city of about 40,000.

 

I submit articles to the local papers. They have been very cooperative in printing them. We just had a full-page article on our winter activities published Easter Sunday March 27th. We had 5 full-page stories last year. You can link to them at...

 

www.troop33dekalb.org

 

It's good to have positive press in the paper for the general public to read. Also it's great for our Scouts and parents, alumni, and our sponsor to read about what we do.

 

Newspapers are businesses. If you can provide them free copy and photos, it to their benefit to use them if they are newsworthy.

 

Cliff Golden

Scoutmaster Troop 33

DeKalb, Illinois

[Aardvark]

Our Troop is always in the paper; the paper is always looking for public interest stories to fill space and is glad to recieve our pictures from campouts etc.

 

Only problem comes from other Troops complaining, "Well, 566 is in the paper again". I just tell them to get off there butts and submit material to the paper!

 

Thinking back, we were on the front page awhile back. We have one of the biggest troops in the area; article was about us with 85 Scouts and 40 Registered Scouters and a Troop with one Scout; Comparing the why and how.

 

WHy-don't know! We do have a good camping history, but thats not the end-all of Scouting (close!). How? we don't recruit; we are running out of room!

 

But we are Happy Scouts!

[Laurie]

Over 150,000 of our local paper (one county) is sold daily, and that's just the county. The city papers have a higher circulation. Therefore, it's not easy to get something printed. The key is often a brief item, better still a photo with one or two lines. Check with your council to see if they have info on how to get in the paper. Our council distributes info on press releases and how to draft them along with providing addresses of all local and city papers. Perhaps yours will have something similar.

[schleining]

This is a great topic.

I have just become the Publicity Chairman for our District and am trying to get all the info I can.

Our Council is rarely in the Newspaper, unless it is something bad, but then the Oregonian only prints the bad stuff, especially if it has to do with conservative groups.

Anyway- I am hoping to change that, especially in our little city paper. They are still friendly to us.

I am also exploring the use of public access cable.

Our Council has its own newspaper which we get monthly, but the public does not get to see it.

We hope to get more and more into the press (all good stuff of course).

 

Jerry