Local News Lessons

Over the years, I’ve learned the value – and some tricks – to collaborating with local news. Maybe your town, too, has a local weekly newspaper; it can be one of your best sources of publicity and advocacy for your choir! Over the last 15 years, I’ve provided as many as 50 articles per year to our local paper. Here are some tried & true strategies for improving your choir’s publicity in the local news.

  • You write, they publish. Local news is a tough business with tight margins; they are often looking for articles they can publish without the cost of reporters or editors. If you can write a coherent, compelling article about a significant event or accomplishment, they will be more than happy to publish it.
  • Use Boilerplate. Make it easy on yourself: use language that can be reused in a large proportion in future articles. In your Google docs, label it clearly with the recurring event (a title like Press Release: State Solo & Ensemble 2022) so you can find it and reuse it next year!
  • Keep it short. A 150-250 word article is easy to write, will usually be long enough to convey everything you need to convey, and will be easy for the newspaper to fit into their layout.
  • Provide Pictures. Local community news publishers and readers love to see pictures of their local kids succeeding.
  • Use Names. Within the confines of district policies about names, you should make every effort to use names in your articles. It gets students and families excited, and makes their achievements feel more real to them.
  • Create quotes. Are you both writing the articles and the conductor? No problem, there won’t be a byline in the article. Articles are more compelling with quotes, so just quote yourself! As I’m writing articles for the Rockford Choirs, I often write quotes for the other directors, too, and then run them by them for approval, as in “Is it ok if I quote you saying this?”
  • Post the articles to social media. Once they’re published, celebrate them online – a photo of a photo in a newspaper is often more exciting than the original photo itself. (Don’t forget to tag the newspaper, if you can, so they know you appreciate them!)