HOW TO GET COVERAGE IN REGENERATION & RENEWAL: TOP 10 TIPS

1) APPROACH THE RIGHT JOURNALIST: News should be sent to the section editor who specialises in your area. If your story really is likely to be of interest to a national audience, the section editor should have the background understanding of the subject matter to spot its significance. Feature and interview ideas should be sent to the features editor. 

2) CHOOSE THE RIGHT MOMENT: You have the best chance of getting a journalist’s attention if you choose a day when they are not under severe deadline pressure. For news reporters on Regeneration & Renewal, the busiest days are Tuesday and Wednesday, and the least busy Thursday and Friday. Late Wednesday afternoon, after the magazine has gone to press, is also quite a good time to try. For the features editor, the workload is more evenly spread.

3) CHOOSE THE RIGHT METHOD OF COMMUNICATION: Journalists in our office usually prefer email. If you know the journalist you are contacting personally, it may help to send the release as an attachment, with a short covering email that hammers home the importance of the story.

4) WHEN YOU HAVE A GENUINELY BIG ANNOUNCEMENT, MAKE SURE JOURNALISTS CANT MISS ITS SIGNIFICANCE: Write your press release in a way that would make the significance of the news clear, even to someone who was not an expert in regeneration and was not familiar with your area. In an ideal world, your press release would always be read by the person who is most knowledgeable about the relevant area. But that won’t always be the case. So make the reason why the story is likely to be of interest to regeneration practitioners nationally absolutely unmissable. 

5) GIVE ADVANCE NOTICE: If you have a few key announcements coming up, why not let key journalists know in advance, even if you can’t give them the detail of the announcement until later? Journalists are more likely to give a story prominence if they have had time to absorb its significance. If the stories are important ones, they may be happy to meet up or even visit for a briefing prior to the announcement.

6) ENCOURAGE DIRECT CONTACT BETWEEN YOUR SENIOR PEOPLE AND JOURNALISTS: If journalists are confident that they can get quick access to key people, they are more likely to keep coming back to them. One of the best ways in which you can get regular coverage for your organisation is to put forward your most knowledgeable colleagues as “expert commentators” on particular issues. We are collaborating with the North-West Regeneration Network on producing a list of expert commentators from the North-West region, and I understand that the  network will be contacting you about this after the event.


7) ENCOURAGE YOUR SENIOR STAFF TO GIVE OUT THEIR MOBILE NUMBERS

8) PROVIDE GOOD QUALITY PHOTOS: If you have the budget, decent quality photos will increase the likelihood of your story getting prominent coverage

9) BE PREPARED TO TALK ON A BACKGROUND BASIS: Sometimes it may be easier for you to help a journalist understand a story’s context if you know that the information you give him or her will not be attributed to you or your organisation. But make sure your understanding of “off the record” is the same as the journalist’s. If you don’t want your comments attributed to you or your organisation, you will need to say this at the outset; otherwise the journalist might identify the organisation without identifying the individual source. Journalists would consider it unprofessional to beak an agreement about a conversation being on or off the record, as long as they have entered into that agreement at the start of the conversation.

10) USE EXCLUSIVES: All magazines want exclusive stories. If they know they have a story exclusively, they are like to use it more prominently than they would otherwise have done.