Make Yourself Newsworthy

News is anything that interests other people. Being newsworthy consists of letting editors and reporters know the Church is doing something of interest to other people—having a significant event, telling a story, or simply making local news.

Editors and producers have the tremendous challenge of coming up with new stories to fill their pages and air slots—day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. It isn't always easy to fill all that space. Therefore, you become their ally. Your potential as a viable local Church news source—along with your ability to promote the Church properly and work cooperatively with media people—will cause local editors to welcome you. Not only will you have a very good chance at getting your news release printed, but a reporter might even arrange a more in-depth story.

Your media contact is neither your friend nor your foe. Cultivate a professional relationship with him or her.

At an appropriate time and after you have developed a relationship with your media contact, remind him or her that readers and viewers might be interested in understanding the relevance and life-changing power of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Events or situations that often lead to coverage:

• Organizing a local Church event such as a preparedness fair, family history open house, or financial planning seminar open to the public.
• Sponsoring community seminars on topics of mutual interest and concern to Church members.
• Alerting your media representative about a unique human interest story involving a local Church member. Perhaps someone in your ward is a champion athlete, or maybe someone has been called to serve an overseas mission.
• Orchestrating a local family week or Family Values program.
• Implementing local Mormon Helping Hands programs to clean local parks, city plazas, schools, beaches, and so on.
• Introducing your media to a newly-called bishop, branch president, Relief Society president, or youth leader. Even the calling of a Primary secretary has been a good local community news story.
• Promoting local Christmas crèche events.
• For other story ideas, see Recognizing Local Media Placement Opportuties.

Don't expect the media to drop everything and report on your story just so the Church can get free publicity. Remember their goals of reporting news and serving the community; you must blend with that agenda. Many editors shy away from blatantly promotional pieces.

Make Life Easier for Your Local Media

• An aspect of thinking like an editor is presenting yourself as the kind of person with whom editors want to deal.
• In any oral or written communication with a media outlet, you should be friendly and approachable, articulate and concise.
• Represent the Church in a professional and polished manner.
• Be willing to answer reporters' questions, even if you have to research the answers and get back to them. (Don't be afraid to say you don't know but can find out, and never give an answer you're not sure is accurate.)
• Finally, know the deadlines and publication schedules of the media you deal with, and understand their importance.

Deadlines

• Typically, morning daily newspapers close the edition around 10 p.m., afternoon papers at around 11 a.m., weeklies two to four days before publication. Some sections may close earlier than others.
• A large metropolitan Sunday newspaper may close the magazine, comics, arts, living, and classified sections as early as Monday and have them already printed and collated as early as the previous Thursday. This frees up the presses for news and sports sections that often get printed Saturday night.
• TV stations tend to like to do the camera work at least two to four hours before the newscast. Give daily and broadcast journalists a minimum of a couple of hours before their deadline to write their story—several days if you're dealing with weeklies, and even longer for monthlies—and don't call any reporter or editor right at deadline, when he or she is frantically trying to get out all of the day’s stories.