Newspaper PR: Special inserts can have early deadlines

From time to time, I receive questions about effectively sending items to newspapers. (I worked several years as an editor for a northern California newspaper. I also served as volunteer publicist for weekly church listings and a Toastmasters club.)

One recent question concerned special publications like a weekly Arts & Entertainment tabloid, produced by a newspaper publisher and inserted into the regular newspaper. My questioner was concerned because a listing he’d submitted was not published by the newspaper.
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As always, I believe the would-be publicist’s first step should be reaching out directly to newsroom staff who produce that publication. Be sure to ask them about format and style, as well as submission deadlines. Pick up recent copies of the publication, and take a look at how other items “read.”

From my experience as an editor of special sections in the newspaper, one of the main reasons that something didn’t see print is that people waited too late to submit it. (Weekly sections or publications come out on a specific day. When that section is an insert, it often has an earlier press deadline than the main paper-body that it’s put into.)

Other reasons that an item might not see print was if it was incorrectly formatted (i.e. a file that the newsroom couldn’t open). Or perhaps the item was composed in such a way that it required extensive editing, far more than staffers felt they had time to devote toward massaging the item into print-readiness.

As a Toastmasters club publicist, I wrote club press releases in the same “inverted-pyramid” style that I might use as a journalist. That is, I packed the most important information — the who, what, where, when, and why — into the story’s opening sentences. I relegated less-important details to further down in the article — things that an editor could safely cut from the story if the newsroom needed to conserve space.

I also wrote to Associated-Press style when composing my articles — thereby greatly reducing the amount of editing that newsroom staff would have to devote.

When I started sending church-service listings to the local newspapers, I contacted the newsroom and asked about style and formatting. I got a hold of a recently published listing and compared it to the submitted-text. I copied the style of the version as-published when composing each new announcement.

Of course, I can’t speak to every specific circumstance that a would-be publicist might face, but I’ve tried here to identify two general and common obstacles to a submission making it into print. Once again, I recommend directly contacting the newsroom: asking about deadlines, format and other guidelines for how they would like your announcement.