Media guides and wikis

"Wikis pose a threat to costly media directories" is the headline of a post stirring things up at Micro Persuasion, a blog by Steve Rubel on "how new technologies are transforming marketing, media and public relations" (The headline to this post links to Steve's item).

As the publisher of a non-costly media directory (Bacon's, per book, $695, three books covers the country; Getting On Air & Into Print: $69 to nonprofits, covers Chicago, Illinois, and parts of the Midwest), I disagree. Quality info costs money--to acquire, organize and distribute.

It's another topic to try and pick up at greater length again, soon. Next week I am going to the True Spin Conference in Denver, where among other folks I'm looking forward to meeting Martin Kearns of Green Media Toolshed. Nonprofits join this organization to gain, and share, resources such as media lists. They pay money to join. If nonprofits will pay for it, it must be a commodity.

What the hell is NP? and tech note

In response to my first questions (ahem), Elizabeth Wampler from Greater Southwest Development Corp. asked why "npcommunicator"--for nonprofit, of course!

For a long time at Commuity Media Workshop we strugled to define our audience--before we came up with this label, "nonprofit communicators."

To label something is of course to over-simplify. For example, the idea of nonprofit communicators obscures the fact that development staff, organizers, or program staff are the folks at most nonprofits who are also responsible for communications, or public relations--more or less interchangeable terms today, no? They do this work in their spare time, otherwise defined as the time that they ain't got.

Another day we'll go into who's to blame for this state of affairs and why. In the meantime, let's just say that while the label oversimplifies, it also restores some sanity for us in defining our audience. As all good marketers know, the more narrowly focused and targeted we are in the folks we try to reach, the better we can anticipate their needs. And np instead of nonprofit, just because it seemed like a lot to type. But I could change it if it's confusing, I guess.

Secondly, as to typepad, Elizabeth, I've been pretty happy so far with Blogger and it was totally free, but I think if I had $10 a month I probably would do Typepad. Hell if I know. Andreas Ramos suggests starting with blogger and then maybe moving to Moveable Type. The most super guide to blogging I've found on the Web, by the way, is "How to be Heard" by Stephen Downes--it's more on the technique of blogging than the technology but I found it really helpful. What made me think of answering this is that I wanted to "trackback" to something on another post and Blogger does not suppor that. But since I still do not know what trackback actually means or how it works, this is no big deal.

Elizabeth you are, like, reader number one. Thanks for asking.

Building relationships with journalists

Yesterday I was on a panel with Larry Bommer, who reviews theater for Chicago Tribune, PerformInk, Free Press and other area papers and Karin McKie, a publicist in the performance world. The Athenaeum Theater's Arts Management Project sponsored the event, which was on 'building relationships with the media.'

What I know about Chicago theater is basically nil; fortunately Karin seemed to know just about every company and every reporter who covers the biz, and Larry described how he has been on both sides of the news--as reviewer and also having plays he wrote reviewed (The Reader, where he works, panned one of his pieces).

My biggest surprise of the evening was how many folks were unfamiliar with the idea that they have to begin their relationships with journalists by pitching them, the way you would pitch a book idea to a publisher or an ad idea. Of course, this is how much of the news gets made--someone calling up a reporter and asking, "Do you have a minute for me to pitch you a story?"

In fact, we always preach "Call, Fax [or Email], Call." In other words, figure out which reporter or reporters might be interested in your story, then call that reporter to pitch the story and only then--if the reporter is interested-- do you send the news release. Since so much random wordage comes in to newsrooms, the advantage to pitching ahead of time is to make your press release a wanted press release, which helps to move it above the rest of the dreck coming to reporters.

I used to say in trainings that 60 percent of the news came from pitches, but that's not based on any very scientific information--I wonder if anyone has any idea how much news comes from pitches?

The real point to being thoughtful about pitching is in support of the Workshop's other sermon: the reason to communicate with a journalist in the first place is never just about seeing your name in the paper, but about getting out the story you want told.

That's why we urge folks not just to pitch, but to be thoughtful about what goes into that pitch before picking up the phone (also important so as not to annoy the reporters on the other end!). How do you write a good pitch? We urge folks to play the 'headline game.'

The headline game is, if you were writing the headline on the story you want to see in tomorrow's newspaper, or as a teaser before tonight's TV news, what would it say? Nine times out of ten, that's pretty close to what you ought to say when you speak with a reporter.

We discussed what to say in terms of how to write it down and package it into a press release. To be clear, the connection between the pitch and the press release is this: write a strong release and the pitch will be easy.

So how do you write a good press release? Larry Bommer had the quote of the evening on this (he is a playwright, after all): "If you're blowing your own horn you're going to hit wrong notes."

Theater, he said, is about creating "subversive alternative universes" not reflecting their own image back at smug bourgeois audiences -- and a good press release must capture the energy of your play, dance, or other performance work and just straightforwardly present what makes it stand out.

Fight Crime Invest in Kids is hiring Communications Coordinator

Communications Coordinator
Fight Crime: Invest in Kids Illinois

FIGHT CRIME: INVEST IN KIDS ILLINOIS is a state affiliate of a national, non-profit advocacy organization comprised of over 2,500 police chiefs, sheriffs, prosecutors, other law enforcement leaders and violence survivors who support public investment in programs that cut crime by helping kids get started on the right track and stay there. The major issue areas are preschool, after-school programs, prevention of child abuse and neglect, and youth mental health services. The three-person Illinois office is a joint project of the Illinois Center for Violence Prevention and the national FIGHT CRIME: INVEST IN KIDS.

Responsibilities: We are seeking an energetic and creative Communications Coordinator to be based in Chicago. He or she will have primary responsibility for the development and implementation of FIGHT CRIME: INVEST IN KIDs Illinois’ earned media strategy, which is centered on putting forward law enforcement leaders and crime survivors to call for public investments in young people that are proven to prevent crime. This position also has responsibility for connecting our nearly 200 Illinois members to our media work as well as coordinating our work on new membership recruitment.

Competitive salary and benefits. Please fax, email or mail completed questionnaire (available here), resume, writing sample and cover letter to:

Communications Coordinator Search
FIGHT CRIME: INVEST IN KIDS Illinois
70 E. Lake St., Suite 720
Chicago, IL 60601
Fax: 312-922-2277
Email: illinoisjobs@fightcrime.org

Training Resource

The Communications Network, a nonprofit PR association primarily for communications staff at foundations, offers free 90-minute webinars on communications topics. The next two are:

January 2006
25 ~Wednesday ~ 1:30 PM EST
The Power of Building Relationships: Finding the Invisible String

FEBRUARY 2006
8 ~Wednesday ~ 1:30 PM EST
Turning A Report into News

Check it out at their schedule page.


Here's the fine print:
There are a limited number seats which will be available on a first come, first serve basis. Using a Webex platform, participants will receive a toll-free number and website login directions. These sessions will be available after the workshop "On Demand," allowing participants to listen and follow the live sessions.

Ongoing Learning Workshops are intended to offer public-interest organizations with limited staff and resources an opportunity to gain information and tools on particular communications issues and/or topics. The 90-minute workshops are professional development seminars that provide an easy way to connect, share ideas and learn about current trends in practice.

Two lessons from week one

Well, chalk one up to experience. Two lessons from week one:

First, find the right platform to blog on.


WordPress seemed like a sexy, clean and user-friendly blog platform. Marnie Webb (of Techsoup and Ext337 blog fame, who will be at our June 7-8 Making Media Connections conference) told me about it & that's where I first created this blog. But the name of the blog by default is the same as your user name and since this is a project of Community Media Workshop, not just Gordon Mayer, that didn't feel right. So I moved it to Blogger.

Second, deciding what's appropriate to post will be the first challenge.

We provided communications training for the Midwest grantees of Hispanics in Philanthropy last week, and a couple of great, and funny, things came out of a storytelling as effective communications segment. It's exciting when people actually start coming to grips with language by figuring out exactly what words they want to use to describe their organization.

In this session, we ask folks to come up with a metaphor for their organization, since we know that images often stick with people they meet long after a specific conversation is over. I think I'd better ask Carlos, from the session, if it's OK to lay out his image before I post it here for the world.

I wish I could remember, in order to give credit where it's due, who first suggested (in some blog posting, somewhere, I believe) that one barrier to nonprofits effectively using the Internet is their sensitivty to reputation and low tolerance for risking their organization's 'image' by speaking clearly and openly--or even in words of less than three syllables.

On the other hand that may just be a rationale for not posting more, sooner.

First Post

Community Media Workshop has been following blogging from the sidelines for more than a year. We've decided to dip our toes in the water around two specific goals.

Goals: Our first goal is to provide useful information to nonprofit communicators who often lack the resources they need to gain access to the news media and journalists looking for stories 'off the beaten path.' Our second goal is to create a forum to let people know about the culminating event in our annual calendar: Making Media Connections, June 7-8, 2006, on the campus of Columbia College Chicago in the south Loop community.

This blog is inspired by four members of the smarter sex: Christine Cupaiuolo, formerly the blogger at Msmusings.net and now with poppolitics.com, Barb Iverson, Columbia College resident expert on blogging, Tracy Van Slyke, publisher of In These Times magazine (this was her idea), and Marnie Webb, whose own blog on nonprofits and technology based at CompuMentor and TechSoup is a pacesetter for nonprofits online (if you run your mouse over the links in the blogroll to the right, you get a brief description of their blogs).