From owner-freebsd-chat Mon Apr 19 14: 9:52 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from hostigos.otherwhen.com (dialin2017.pernet.net [205.229.2.17]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 33603155DF for ; Mon, 19 Apr 1999 14:09:44 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mavery@mail.otherwhen.com) Received: from mail.otherwhen.com (mail.2.229.205.in-addr.arpa [205.229.2.19] (may be forged)) by hostigos.otherwhen.com (8.8.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id QAA26264 for ; Mon, 19 Apr 1999 16:20:03 -0500 (CDT) Message-Id: <199904192120.QAA26264@hostigos.otherwhen.com> Received: from PORKY/SpoolDir by mail.otherwhen.com (Mercury 1.44); 19 Apr 99 16:07:13 -0600 Received: from SpoolDir by PORKY (Mercury 1.44); 19 Apr 99 16:06:41 -0600 From: "Mike Avery" To: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1999 16:06:35 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Making press contacts (was: Re: Charles Henrich a Star? ) Reply-To: mavery@mail.otherwhen.com References: Your message of "Mon, 19 Apr 1999 20:12:55 BST." In-reply-to: <6253.924549638@zippy.cdrom.com> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.02b21) Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On 19 Apr 99, at 12:20, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: > > I take your point but actually, a press release is something we write > > and "release to the press", whether they print it or not is another > > matter :-) > So far, the press that we know of (and most of us don't have much in > the way of press contacts, I certainly don't) has not printed it. :( Oh.... that's easily resolved. Magazines are there to print news. And every time the magazine is printed, something has to be in there. Feeding the hungry column inches isn't easy. So... your material might as well be in there instead of something else. The trick is you have to convince the writers and editors that your press release is news. Of course, what is news is subjective.... so spreading the message to more people is a good idea. Here's what I'd do... as you read magazines, note the names of the writers and editors. If any of them cover material that could also cover FreeBSD, jot down their name(s). (To put this in perspective - if Harvey Schwartz only covers printers, sending him a note is probably a waste of time. If Fred covers network operating systems, he needs your press releases.) Also, many magazines print the email addresses of the writers and editors on every article. If the magazine you're reading does that, jot that down too. If the magazine didn't include the email address, once you have all the names collected from a magazine, flip to the front of the magazine and look at the information there. Often in amongst the table of contents and other masthead information is a section on "how to contact us". If that hasn't helped, check their home page and look around. Do a search on the author and editors names. If you still haven't gotten it, call the magazine. Ask for the editor in charge of the appropriate section. Tell the editor how much you enjoyed the writer's recent piece on whatever, and that you'd like to send the writer a "thank you". And then ask for the email addresses of the guilty parties. Get the editor's email address also, if you haven't already. If an article is good, that suggests that an editor helped it. Sometimes by refining it, sometimes by not ruining it. Either way, they deserve thanks. Once you have the email addresses, put 'em into a distribution list or mailing list and use 'em. Also - set it up so people don't see all the addresses you sent it too. The best news is exclusive news. And while we all know it was sent to 100 other people (or more), we'd like to dream that we alone got it. And scrolling down 100 names in the "to:" and "cc:" sections is a real drag. You can try to setup a "FreeBSD Press Releases" mailing list, but subscribing to it would require action on the part of the people you are trying to reach... all in all, I don't think it would work too well. Needless to say, if some of the people get annoyed and ask to not receive any more press releases, stop sending 'em. You usually don't win points by annoying people. Mike ====================================================================== Mike Avery MAvery@mail.otherwhen.com (409)-842-2942 (work) ICQ: 16241692 * Spam is for lusers who can't get business any other way * A Randomly Selected Thought For The Day: One thing about pain....it proves you're alive. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message