The time does get away from you; more tips

Gads, the time does go past. It sounds so easy, when bloggers tell you, you need to post once a week. I'd say the problem is not finding something to say, but choosing from the rich soup of material.

Just to take one item from the past couple of weeks, we have been doing our regular Professional Media Relations training for about 23 people from across Chicago and suburbs, and last week we had three alumni at different stages in their career come speak about their experiences: Mikki Leventhal from Columbia College Chicago, Mike Burke from Bounce Learning Network, and Marissa Graciosa from Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.

All three shared how-to tips; the funniest were Marissa's since she framed them in terms of mistakes she made while learning along the way:

1. Getting bawled out by a reporter for calling her to pitch it at 4 p.m. on a Friday. (Moral: call earlier in the day, earlier in the week)

2. Disposing of dozens of uneaten breakfasts when just 3 people showed up at a breakfast briefing for journalists with ethnic media at 8:30 a.m. on a weekday in the downtown Union League club. (Moral: go meet journalists who work in the neighborhoods in the neighborhoods where they work, or at least close by)

3. Making an enemy out of a reporter in one section of a newspaper by simultaneously pitching a second reporter at the same paper without telling the first one. (Moral: simultaneous pitching without full disclosure is a bad idea).