So, your teachers and staff are preparing for another great event. You worked hard to let your local media folks know about it and why you thought it would make a good coverage opportunity ahead of time. Despite the high hopes you had for a media frenzy, when the event kicked off, you and your camera were the only ones there to capture it.
Many education professionals would be upset. Angry. Hurt. They’d bemoan the negative coverage they often get and say things like, “How come no one ever cares about all the good things going on around here?”
Fortunately, that’s not your reaction. You know it’s called “earned” media for a reason. You know that even the best pitches for the most newsworthy events can still result in no coverage due to factors beyond anyone’s control. Most importantly, you aren’t ever going to let a no-show stop you from telling your story. The good news is you’ve already got everything you need to get the word out.
In a previous post, I helped you think through different ways to communicate with the media. Media Alerts, Press Releases, and Submitted Stories were three big areas we tackled. This post is going to drill down deeper on Submitted Stories, as well as demonstrating how they all function together, along with your communication plan.
Why should you listen to me about any of this? Well, first of all, you don’t have to—my daughter doesn’t really listen to me, and she seems to be doing fine. Of course, I’ve never been a teenage girl. But you know what I have been? A school communications and PR lead for an urban and a rural school district. Before that, I spent five years as a small-town community newspaper editor, and the three years before that as the primary education beat reporter. I’ve played this game from both sides, and I want to help break down the walls that are keeping you from getting your story out there.
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My goal is for you to get a ton of value out of this, and there’s just no replacement for a good old fashioned example. We’ve included a series of three samples that you might send to the media for this event I completely made up, the Growing Great pilot program at Piney Woods Elementary School. Check them out here.
Before the event
Ok, before we get to the act of creating the elements of your submitted story, we do need to set the stage a bit. Well, actually, you need to set the stage and get yourself ready to succeed. This does not happen the day of an event (more on that soon).
Communicate with stakeholders. Internally, you should be executing your communications plan for the event. Families and stakeholder groups should be receiving flyers, emails, social media and web posts, whatever you do. Generating buzz in your audience is more powerful than you may think. In the era of social media connectivity, that engagement can draw media interest before you even reach out. When you do pitch, high levels of engagement seen on social media promotions and high-quality graphic design in your materials can definitely help sway a decision-maker to cover the event.
Get photographic release issues straight. Policies can be a bit different, but make sure you know the rules you need to respect. Work with your school’s administration to determine which students are on the no-publish photography list. Getting this information ahead of time (or at least at the event) will help you avoid those particular students as you take pictures. By front-loading that information, you don’t spend time taking pictures of the wrong students, only to find out later they are unusable. Of course, it’s hard to identify every student in the school, so make sure you have a plan to have someone else check behind you.
Send the media alert. Actually, I always like to come up with a reason to send two media alerts. That way, I’ve got something to send around 10–14 days out, and then another for the week of. You could just send it again or send a straight follow-up email, but that can be a bit annoying. Journalists can receive hundreds of coverage requests in a given week, so there should not be an expectation that they will reply promptly and directly to each one—even if you are local. Besides, saving a piece of information and then dropping it as the event nears creates some excitement and some elevation that might pull someone off the fence.
That said, the main goal of the second release is still all about reminding them. Media outlets are inundated with story ideas with so many possibilities. There’s not really such a thing as a slow news day. On top of that, many of the actual reporters/producers are early in their careers. They don’t always have good personal organization systems in place to manage themselves to a level where they’ll remember everything. That’s especially true in such a scattered and responsive industry. It’s always good to poke them with a stick.
Of course, the biggest problem most schools have with getting the media out isn’t that the reporter forgets. The problem is that education professionals forget to ask. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been sitting at my desk in the district office and gotten a call from a school asking for coverage of an amazing event that could draw media—and it starts in less than an hour. Definitely not going to happen, especially in a district an hour away from the closest news stations. Honestly, I’ve probably experienced that situation almost as often as a call two weeks out to ask how I can help promote an event. Even worse is when schools even forget to notify their families about an event until the week of. It’s not professional, it’s not okay, and it has to stop. If you are going to host an event, and it’s worth spending the time to set up, you must spend a little time planning your communications around it.
Get the blessing to send the submitted story. In the process of inviting the media with the alert, you’re sure to get some regrets. That’s ok. It’s also your chance to offer the submitted story. When the reporter says they can’t make it, just reply politely that you understand, and add that you’d love to send some pictures and a write-up for them to consider. Putting this general plan in place ahead of time is a great way to avoid wasting time later. If they agree to it, it’s a big win! Of course, it’s just the beginning of the next round of work.
You will need to think of yourself as their contractor for this assignment. Find out what they want, and especially when they want it. If they say they want it the same-day, then you need to figure out how to make that happen. Usually, that might mean a TV station that only want stills and some key facts. Basically, you will plan to just rework what you’ve already sent, add in a rough headcount and anything particularly notable, and send it on with your best pictures. Depending on deadlines, you might even need to do this before the event is over. So plan for everything—have all your gear to crank this out when they need it.
Conversely, a weekly community newspaper that wants a submitted story may not need it for another week. You should not wait a week to give it to them, but once you finish the event and then finish storytelling for your audience, you need to go ahead and get it in a final format for the paper. Plan how you are going to do this instead of waiting until the newspaper is calling you about a hole they’ve saved you on page A5.
Prepare to tell your story. You should use those pre-event communications as a great way to start pre-writing your story. You already know what the big picture is, so there’s nothing wrong with having a few introductory and detailed paragraphs written ahead of time. If it’s a marquee event (teacher of the year announcement) or particularly timely or political, you might even have the whole thing written ahead of time. It’s not cheating; just make sure you proof it one last time after the event and before you send to allow you to edit for anything that didn’t really go the way you expected.
At the event
Take some notes. Photos will be the most important thing you do at the event (other than any event-based responsibilities you have—hopefully none). You also need to get some words, though. If someone’s giving a speech, just jot down a key line or two from it. Pick one fun question, and ask it to a few students and parents, and write down some of the best answers. Having these in-hand will make the production stages much easier. Could you go find them later and ask the same questions? Sure you could, but it would cause significantly more headaches for you and for them rather than just capturing that feedback in the moment. Also, be sure to write down names of non-students you photograph or anyone you might not know.
Take too many pictures. If you are a professional photographer, you don’t need to take any of my advice, and you can skip this section. If, like the rest of us, you don’t really know what you’re doing, the first rule of thumb is to take a lot of pictures. Make sure to get plenty of your administrators and officials, but these won’t necessarily be the best images to publicize. Smiling faces of kids engaged in something loosely related to instruction is the highest form of school event photography. When I say too many pictures, I also mean different angles, orientations (horizontal and vertical), candid, posed, inside, outside, or whatever. You can’t go back and get them later. Better to get everything you can now.