Working for a poor impoverished charidee, I don’t have a PR person.

I do have a rather interesting news article and project that I want to shout about.

Any contacts for either- education journalist or blogger?
Any advice for how I get it noticed / picked up by education editors?

Cheers in advance 🙂

When I was fundraising to raise money for Glencoe MRT after the avalanche in 2013* I just e-mailed the paper. Local papers in particular are easy to contact, you e-mail whatever address you can find and it’ll make its way to the right person. If you’re in Oban Times’s remit I’ve got an e-mail address if you want it, I think I’ve got a few more somewhere for bigger Scottish papers.

*COUGH- doing the puffer for them again this weekend in memory of my friend Chris who died in the avalanche and you can donate here- https://www.justgiving.com/Luke-Bradley/

(Based on the above, hire me and I’ll be your PR consultant 😉 )

*likes*

Aiming at mainstream media or education specialist? Obviously I don’t know what the story is, so wouldn’t know exactly where to point you.

Depending on target audience and level of interestingness, you could try Times Educational Supplement maybe. Or Sean Coughlan at the BBC News Website. He’s a good bloke.

Hint: If it’s something that can involve a case study, having that lined up and available for interview or filming can make it far more attractive to us hacks.

Google/ring until you find emails for the correct people. Phoning up first can’t hurt. Phoning up afterwards can’t hurt either.

Somewhere like a local paper is probably gagging for news. You can might be able to email anyone and it’ll find its way through. Ditto certain websites. Bigger national titles aren’t and you’ll often need to get it to the correct person yourself.

Make it easy for the people you email. Get to the point quickly. Don’t add multiple attachments they have to wade through. Make sure what you send them isn’t full of errors. Put simple contact details – eg for more info, pictures etc contact (email, phone).

Don’t be too sad if you get totally ignored. (But chase them up if you do.)

I’d give the local rag a bell, and maybe the regional one too if you have one. Local TV and radio worth a try too if it genuinely is interesting (is it secret? we won’t tell anyone).

Do you have one of those county-based lifestyle mags in your area? They like outdoorsy stuff.

You’ll probably have a good photo op as part of the story if it’s outdoors education-based? That’s a major plus – so be sure to mention it.

(former local news reporter here)

Cheers all – it is a fun one looking at value of play in secondary schools, with opportunity to visit a couple of the schools I worked with.

I have short press release, three pics and a link to the full reports should anyone need.

I have been googling lots of national folk, I guess I need them to open the email from some random bloke in a piddly little charity…however it is paid for by Scottish Government, and is part of their policy…

Talk to the people who’ve funded you, they’ll be keen to shout about what their money is doing and should have their own PR and channels to the press

Thank you all, some success to report….

Win = Times Educational Supplement will do an article next week. 8)
Lose = the Daily Mail want to as well. 😉

Woohoo….actually makes it look like I know what I’m talking about! 8)

DM specialist reporters are fine, mostly. It’s the newsdesk folk you need to be especially wary of.

Only one thing. TES is weekly, so make sure it doesn’t appear in the Mail too soon, otherwise they may drop it.