Sarah Massey, Massey-Media, suggests this timeline for contacting media with a press advisory to cover your story:
Monthly magazines–at least 1 month prior to publication (I’m thinking earlier, what about you?)
Weekly paper–at least 2 weeks in advance
Daily paper, TV, radio–at least 1 week in advance
Then call your targets, the journalists whom you most want to reach. [...]
I am writing an annual report for a nonprofit, my third time for this group. What makes it relatively easy, I realize, besides knowing the organization, is how they got ready for me:
They told me in our initial meeting which activities they want to highlight for the year.
They put together a notebook with press [...]
Here’s what I mean by “verbal journaling”–saying out loud (but to yourself, not to someone else) a few sentences about what you did, how you feel, what you are planning.
Why?
If you spend a lot of time by yourself, at your computer, have you ever noticed how long you can go without using your voice? [...]
I fainted on the top floor of the Holocaust Museum, someplace between the boycott on Jewish businesses and the turnback of the Jews on the S.S. Louis.
It wasn’t the messages, disturbing as they always are to see, although the dark, closed space of the exhibit hall didn’t help. I fainted because I took two medications [...]
I’m about to be another link in a chain of our synagogue’s High Holidays Food Drive.
We distributed empty grocery bags to them on Rosh Hashana and they brought them back full on Yom Kippur. The bags spent the weekend in the storage shed. This morning, I’ll open the shed and we will distibute about [...]
As I thought more about the death of my first editor at the Washington Post, I wrote an essay about her and what she taught me (or what I learned). Check it out on the Absolute Write website.
Consider what your first boss was like, and how you perceived him or her when you were [...]
My weekend made me feel like a pinball bouncing from (what are the components inside a pinball machine called, anyhow?) gizmo to boing-y thing, sometimes racking up points but mostly generating light flashes and noise.
Friday night, book club with one group of women. Saturday morning, envelope-stuffing for our local high school’s alcohol-free all-night grad party. [...]
