Part 3.3

Earlier, we talked about the virtues of keeping your news releases clear, short, and to the point. But unless all you want from your publicity effort is a simple calendar announcement, such a concise and pithy release will leave reporters without enough information to produce a good story.

What do you do? You don’t send just the news release—you create a media kit.

A media kit can be as simple or as complex as you want to make it. For our purposes, we will assume that you’re on a typically limited budget, so you won’t be interested in gimmicky packaging or free balloons or refrigerator magnets as attention-getters, and you’re probably not going to be sending video press kits.

You can provide a printed media kit, usually made up of several of the items described in the sections below, or you can set up a media website, either as a stand-alone site or as a media section of your regular website. One big advantage of the web option is that you can easily update your material as needed.

In either case, what you want is to provide information to enable reporters to write a good, informative story. As always, try to make the reporter’s job easier by presenting your information as clearly as you can, in an easy-to-follow format. (Usually, as long as the layout is clear and legible, it’s not necessary to use the doublespacing and very wide margins of a news release.)

The Backgrounder

An obvious item to include in your media kit is a backgrounder on your club or organization. A backgrounder might include the club’s history, coach and staff information, membership demographics, how it’s financed, and what it does.

For example:

Purpose: The Anytown Fencing Club provides individual and group instruction

Organization & Membership: The Anytown Fencing Club is a California nonprofit corporation founded in 1987. It has 120 members in the Anytown metropolitan area . . . .

Normally, you would only need to update this type of backgrounder as often as the information contained in it changes.

The Fact Sheet

A fact sheet typically is tailored more to the specific event you’re publicizing, and it might be appropriate to include more than one fact sheet.

For instance, if you have a big regional tournament coming up, you might include in your press kit a fact sheet on the recent growth in fencing in your club or area, and cite recent high-level results of local members at past tournaments or events in other regions.

You could also include a fact sheet on the basics of fencing, describing the three different weapons and illustrating their respective target areas. (This information might even appear unchanged as a sidebar to whatever article finally appears in the paper.)

Once you decide on the focus of your publicity efforts, you’ll probably be able to think of several different types of information that would be useful to reporters. Just don’t overdo it—make sure that the information you provide is relevant to the specific event you’re promoting, and that each fact sheet is clearly identified with a subject title.

Other Press Kit Items

Other possible items in your press kit might include:

•press clippings (after all, if a story appeared somewhere else, it must have been newsworthy!)

•a “quote” sheet—quoted statements (sound bites!) that can be used in a story. These should be from real, live people with some relationship to your event, such as coaches, competitors, or perhaps even a local official to talk about the amount of business a locally held NAC will bring to the area.

•a bibliography—If you’re especially hopeful of a major feature article on the sport, this could get a reporter started on her research. Emphasize currently available books, magazines, articles, and—especially—websites. Make sure that whatever you recommend is readily available—again, make that reporter’s job as easy as you can.

Sending It Out

Once everything is ready, you can publish your media website or mail your printed kit out. Don’t staple the pages together, even if your press release is longer than one page and you just want to keep those pages together. If you feel you must attach pages, use a paper clip.

If your information package is less than six pages, fold it and mail it in a #10 business envelope. If more, use a flat 9 x 12 inch envelope, preferably white. If you use brown kraft envelopes, make sure they are marked to be sent first class; unmarked, they may end up traveling third class. If your kit includes many separate pieces , you can opt to organize them all in a portfolio or folder before they go into that envelope.

Always send your press materials first class. Anything less is announcing to your recipients that you’re sending them junk mail.

Building a Media List

All right—you’ve figured out what you want to say, how to say it, it’s proofed and printed and ready to go. Who do you send your information to?

There’s the easy way: get out your local Yellow Pages and send your material to every newspaper, every radio station, and every television station listed. This way, of course, you can maximize the probability that most of your information will end up in a wastebasket somewhere in town.

It pays to be a bit more selective and direct your materials carefully. If you plan to send anything to the media more than once every two or three years, start building yourself a media list. Building a good list will take time and work, but will be well worth the trouble.

A good media list will be specific to your needs. It will include every publication or station that is likely to be interested in your information, but will omit those for whom your stuff will be a waste of time and paper. For fencers, this means you will probably include all the general interest newspapers, the parenting and fitness monthlies, and any alternative papers in town, but you’ll ignore the legal announcement papers, the real estate weeklies, and other specialized publications.

Specialized publications worth looking into, though, are ethnic or cultural publications. Almost any good-sized city is likely to have newspapers serving African-American, Spanish-speaking, Catholic, Jewish, or other communities. Don’t ignore any publication that is likely to reach people you want to hear about your club or event. (It’s a good idea, though, with foreign-language papers, to know someone who reads the language, or you’ll likely be wasting time and effort again.)

Publication names and addresses are a good start, but for a really useful media list, you’ll need more. What do you do with mail addressed to “occupant”? Except for the very smallest papers which have only one or two staff members, you are essentially writing to “occupant” if you don’t address your release to a specific person.

Read your paper; look at the masthead (usually inside the front page) for contact information for the different departments or check the paper’s website. Look for contact information for assignment editors or sports editors, or for a reporter or columnist whose work you like. If you’ve been interviewed for a story, try sending things to that reporter. You can also call (try to avoid deadline hours—check right away whether it’s a good time to call) and ask to speak to the assignment editor: ask who you should send your material to. Most editors are happy to provide such information—it can save them time and trouble later.

If you send material to a contact, try calling a few days later to see if they received it, or if they have any questions. Such calls may also pique interest in a story that had been headed for the trash. (Or sometimes it’s already made it to the trash, in which case you might be asked to send another copy—do so, along with a note saying you’ve sent it at their request, so they don’t automatically toss it again.)

Another means of feedback is to include a postpaid card with boxes to check off on whether they used the information, whether they’d like more information, and whether they want future mailings from you.

Keep track of which individuals you send things to and what kind of response you get. Eventually you may develop different contacts for different types of stories at each publication. For example, your recent club expansion might not interest the sports department of your local paper, but might appeal to a business department editor looking into fitness market growth.

In the process of developing contacts, you may also develop relationships with reporters and editors. Not only will you learn who to talk to and what kinds of stories you can get, but they will also learn that you are a reliable source of information or that you’re happy to provide an interesting backdrop for a stand-up TV report (as many fencing clubs did for local NBC affiliates attempting to tie their stations to the network’s Beijing coverage).

Featuring Fencing

All right, you’re a coach or club organizer and you’ve got a story to tell about fencing. It may be the story of a particular fencer or coach, of a whole family who compete, or of an ancillary supporter, such as an armorer or referee.

What you probably don’t have is news.

It’s not news in the sense that the Olympics were news, or that a big hurricane is news. Unlike “hard news,” your story isn’t time-sensitive: it makes no difference whether it appears on Tuesday or Wednesday.

What you’ve got is a feature article.

But other than being “softer” than election results or diplomatic overtures, what exactly is a feature?

In her book, The Essential Feature, Vicky Hay says a feature is:

. . . a long, nonfiction story, 800 to 3,000 or more words, written in clear, simple language and dressed out rather casually. . .[I]t is always factual and . . . is based on solid research. But unlike a news story, it begins with a lead like a fictional opening and presents facts in a more flexible manner. The writer may take an obvious point of view, and the story may use fictional techniques to show rather than tell the reader what is going on.

Because you are allowed to tell your story like a story, feature articles can be a lot more fun to write than straight news.

A good fencing feature could take any number of forms:

•human interest—focusing on the everyday routine of practice and lessons at your club.

•personal profile—focusing on a specific person, perhaps a teen fencer who is also a referee, or a grandparent who got into armoring to spend time with his fencing grandkids.

•color story—a light, descriptive piece covering a particular event, say a Junior Olympic qualifier or a group of fencers preparing for Summer Nationals (photos would be a natural for a color piece).

•the how-to or service piece—an informational piece intended to give the reader the specifics of what competitive fencing is, how to find a club or coach, etc.

•personal experience—one individual’s account of her fencing competition. This one might be tricky to make appealing enough for general interest.

•the sidebar—a short piece meant to accompany a larger article; for instance, local club information to go along with a personal profile, or one or two personal stories alongside a service piece.

Structuring the Story

No matter what approach they take on a story, all feature articles share certain characteristics:

•the lede—the opening of the story: an introduction to a person, an anecdote (often not finished until the end of the article), a set scene, possibly even dialogue.

•the transition—explains what the article is about, and why the story is worth telling.

•development—the meat of the article; it might give some background on the sport of fencing, compare local with national statistics, quote relevant experts (whoever they might be). This is the section that will likely be cut if the article needs trimming for space.

•strong ending—unlike the straight news story, which can sometimes dribble away to nothing as its facts become less and less important, a feature has a real conclusion. It may take the form of a pithy quote or it might be the end of an anecdote which started the piece.

One variation often used in feature articles is to start several parallel stories (perhaps looking at two or three fencers of different ages or experience) and tie them together (perhaps they have more in common than is immediately apparent) through the course of the article.

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