How to Contact the Media

TIP: When you call a newspaper or television station, have contact names, phone numbers and interesting stories on hand. You may want to pre-select a few students who would feel comfortable talking to a reporter.

• What are the daily newspapers in your area? Community (weekly) newspapers in your area? Online news? Local television? Radio stations? Call and ask for the names of the reporters who are responsible for the local school, education or technology stories. Using the enclosed press release template, simply fill in the blanks pertaining to your school's project and send a copy of your press release addressed specifically to these reporters. Be sure to also send a press release to the attention of the newspaper editor or television station news director or assignment editor.
  
  

• Identify any pieces of information or human interest items about you, your students or your CyberFair project that can be sent in an email, a letter, or fax to the lifestyle or technology section editors of your local paper. Try to think of items that will be of interest to most of the readers. For example, did your students discover anything new and noteworthy about the community aspect that you highlighted in your CyberFair project?
  
  
• Check out your community newspaper's Opinions/Editorial section, or "Op/Ed" page. Who are the local columnists (not the nationally-syndicated ones from elsewhere) and what are the subjects of their columns? Do they write about the community, business, politics, technology? Is there an angle to your CyberFair project which would provide interesting material for any of their columns?
  
  
• If your local newspaper is unwilling to cover this announcement as a news story or Op/Ed piece, consider writing and submitting your own Op/Ed column or a "letter to the editor" congratulating your school and your students on participating in this cyber learning program.
  
  
• What are the local television stations? Target the state assignment editor or the producer of your local morning news show, evening news show, news magazine about doing an in-depth piece on your students and how CyberFair provides a positive learning experience on the Internet for them.
  
  
• In many communities, there's a local cable television station that gives time to schools to provide information or activities. Have someone videotape your students performing a demonstration of how they created their page and submit it.
  
  
• Are there local radio talk shows in your city or town? Talk with the show's producer to get him or her interested interviewing you or one of your students who participated in researching or building your CyberFair project.
  
  
• Have your students take the show on the road by visiting a local Senior Citizens center, the City Council, or the Rotary Club to show them your project. Alert the media in advance by sending them a Press Advisory.
  
  
• Talk to the editor of your school's paper about doing a story.
  
  
• Contact your school district's Public Relations or community affairs representative. If there is a district newsletter that goes to parents and community members, suggest that an article be included about your CyberFair project.
  
  
• Talk to your school's PTA newsletter editor about writing a story.
  
  
• Write your own blog and update it periodically.
   
• Produce a podcast or a short video about your project and post it online.