 This is Larry Rieger. I want to welcome everybody on behalf of Heritage Preservation and the American Association of State and Local History. Our organizations have had the privilege of working closely with IMLS on its very successful Connecting to Collections initiative, and this webinar is part of that series. I'm confident that you will take away valuable lessons from the speakers for this webinar. I have the pleasure of learning from Anne Edgar about how to get members of the press and other media interested in a story at Two Connecting to Collections raising the bar workshops this summer. Judith Dabrinsky is one of the foremost reporters and commentators on culture. I know that you will find her insights into the workings of the press to be invaluable. Speaking of you, this leads me to ask you to participate so that we can learn more about you by completing the first two polls which you will see on your computer screen. First, what part of the country are you joining us from? Great, we're getting all kinds of responses. And the second is, what kind of institution are you affiliated with? This is a very long poll, so let's make sure that you can see all of this because we have lots of different kinds of... Let me try to resize this here. I'll slide this over here. Can you see all of that on your screen? Go ahead, Larry. Okay. Actually, now I'm pleased to introduce Marcia Simmel who is Acting Director of IMLS. Marcia is also Deputy Director for Museums and Director for Strategic Partnerships, and she will give you a brief overview of IMLS's multifaceted Connecting to Collections initiative. As I turn the program over to Marcia and become a participant in this webinar, I have one last poll question for you. Are you watching this webinar by yourself or with others? Okay, let's... because I see that answers are still coming in on some of the other polls, I'm going to slide this off. I want to give people a chance to answer. Yeah, and this is Marcia. Susan, I'll let you move things around here for us. I will. Just let's give the audience a second to answer this last poll. Sure. While people are answering, I just want to welcome you all. We are so thrilled and pleased that we are continuing our Connecting to Collections work through webinars like this one. I want to start by thanking our wonderful partners at Heritage Preservation and at the American Association for State and Local History. You are... we've had a wonderful relationship with our two partner organizations, and we could not have done this without them. So I'll just briefly remind everybody that the Institute of Museum and Library Services is a federal agency, and we have three main goals in our work, sustaining culture, heritage, and knowledge, enhancing learning and spurring innovation, and supporting professional training so that the staff of libraries and museums can be leaders in their communities. And I'm not seeing anything on my screen right now. Here we go. Is this what you're looking for? I've taken the polls away. Okay. We're all... You know, this is election season, so these polls are really interesting to us, of course. But I can talk without the sides, too. Basically, Connecting to Collections was a national priority initiative of the Institute of Museum and Library Services that was inspired by the Heritage Health Index, which revealed startling needs in libraries, museums, and archives around preservation and conservation of our incredibly valuable and enormously rich collections. It's been a multi-part initiative that's included a national summit for national forums and international convening 57 statewide planning grants, almost 3,000 bookshelves, conservation bookshelves, but I suspect that many of you who are participating this morning have been part of the initiative one way or another. We want you to stay part of this family. This is an initiative that is extraordinarily important in building a kind of collective sense of solidarity, a learning community, a community that's educating not only ourselves, but people within and across the nation around the value of our collections, their real needs in taking care of the collections, changing definitions and practice and stewardship. So with that, I just want to say that I'm thrilled that there's been such a wonderful response so far, and I'm grateful here to my colleagues, especially Nancy Rogers and Abby Sweats, who are really taking this forward. Thanks so much. And I guess now I would like to introduce our two experts who will be taking you the rest of the way, Ann Edgar, the principal of Ann Edgar Associates in New York, who's done so much work, as Larry said, in our Raising the Bar Webinars, and she's worked with institutions all across the country around publicizing and spreading the word and really building public awareness and communications around the role of museums. And Judith Drobrynsky, an award-winning journalist based in New York who has written so passionately and competently and persuasively about the relationship between arts and business. Ann and Judith, thank you so much for being part of this, and I'll turn this over to you. Well, this is Ann speaking, and I'm really glad to be here. I'm taking one moment to start my stopwatch because I don't want to go on too long. I will be jumping in right now, though, with little ado. One thing I would like to ask is what do you guys think? How is press coverage different from an advertisement? If I could have some stab, there's some answers, and I know this is 101, but let's see if we can get some answers right away on that and we'll figure out what we're talking about today. And I opened up a separate chat box here that you can put your answers immediately into. I see Linda and Diana and Vicki have figured this out so that you can answer in the center. Boy, I'm seeing great answers, too. Great answers. And it's really about what we're here today talking about. We're talking today just about, at least I'm talking today, just about publicity and media relations. Yes, indeed, media relations cannot be paid for. It's not an advertisement. It does carry more credibility because an independent news outlet trusts you enough and believes in your story enough to tell it for you or to report to their readers, viewers, or listeners. So today we're talking about ways that you can convince newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and online outlets that some part of your collection is newsworthy enough for their users. And they'll cover you for free. You can't control it. The media isn't there to serve you, but the media is your friend, and that's a little bit of what we'll be talking about today. I hope everyone... Can everyone see these answers? Because it's all great, it involves uncertainty. Yes, media relations cannot be controlled. We wouldn't want it to. It often reaches a broader audience. It's picked up, particularly in the states of social media. So I'm just going to hope that everyone is reading these answers that are really so good. I just want to take a moment to say that there's not enough time today to talk about everything in the degree I would like to. This is the best resource I know for this subject. $24 best investment you can make. I have no stake in it, I must say. Now, I'd like to know a little bit more about you as we talk about doing publicity for your collections today. I see it coming in. One thing I'm seeing is that, for the most part, we're not trained communicators, which is fine. That's what we're talking about today, the ability that it really works, using your common sense and your sense of what's newsworthy in your collection. So this is great that it's coming in. And Ann, I should interject here. Sure. That they can select more than one role, I believe. Absolutely, because I have this feeling that a lot of you guys are multitasking. I don't. I'm lucky enough to do this all the time and nothing else, but that has its own insanity, too. And the name of that book was what again? Let me go back. Let me grab it from the bookshelf. It's publicity for nonprofits. It's by a professional. It's by a woman named Sandra Beckwith. It's really, you guys, written for social organizations, nonprofits along the spectrum, but it's still the best and I think you'll find it helpful, too. Okay. Wow. This is great. What we're going to be talking about today is how to bring media visibility to your collection without being a trained publicist. You don't need to be. And it's about how to do that intelligently and effectively. I'd also like to, a bit of questions at the beginning, and then I won't front-load so much, but if I could also ask you what percentage of your time you are now spending on publicity outreach each week. One thing I wanted to say to you guys today is we're going to be talking about how you can do effective publicity work with few resources and, you know, not a great amount of time. I wanted to assure you, though, that I'm not talking to you today about many PR or a different set of criteria than I use. Today we're talking about the most intelligent and best way to reach the media, and most of the thinking that I'm sharing with you today is thinking about how I work as someone who's been doing this work for more than 20 years and works for museums around the country. So, 71 of us at the moment devote less than 10% of their time to publicity work. Now, I want to take just a moment to kind of let's start at the very beginning, which is what makes something newsworthy? You know, I see that there are people here from Mount Vernon, from Tennessee, from Memphis, from Kingsport, from Albany, all around the country and Canada. And, oh, wonderful, thank you so much. Yep, yep, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. You're saying all the things we're going to talk about, I will try to, therefore, perhaps go a little more quickly through this part, but I took a stab. You know, something is newsworthy when it's unusual, when it doesn't happen very often. Susan, I'm trying to seem... Oh, good, thank you. Something is newsworthy when it's the first. And of course this isn't... Susan, this is not quite clicking for me. Oh, that's because I'm not using the button correctly. I'm sorry. You guys, I only know how to use one button, and I'm not even doing well at that. But something is newsworthy often when it's the first, when it's never been seen before, when it's rare, when it's old, unbelievably old. Perhaps you guys remember that a year ago, there was a story about the world's oldest shoe, a prehistoric shoe that was found in Armenia. Well, you know, that's news. And of course, expensive, very expensive. You'll remember many of you who are my age or remember a decade ago when the Smithsonian was celebrating its bicentennial. I believe it was its hope diamond that was one of the centerpieces of that exhibition. In part because of the beauty, but in part because of the vast value. We'll also be talking today about how to find stories in your collection, and that's often human interest, because, you know, we know we're just fancy primates, right? And we are curious about each other. So you look at objects and try to... You know, it's about who owned that. Decades ago, a century ago, centuries ago. Who made that object? Perhaps who found or saved it. And of course, who conserved it? Who made a heroic effort to conserve it? And of course, that might be you. That might be your museum or gallery. In a sense, because you don't have much time and you don't have much resources, I really urge you to practice a kind of triage. To look at your collections and see if you can in a disinterested way. Everyone will just glance at this headline. The Museum of Motorcycle History receives its first brown motorcycle. Thank you, thank you. Why is that not newsworthy? Because while it might be important to you institutionally, it might be an institutional milestone for you that you now have your first brown motorcycle. That literally means that it's of interest to the world. So as you play, you do a kind of triage of your collection. Ask yourself, is this just important to me because it's a milestone internally? Because it's a collection I've waited the longest for. It's the first time perhaps we've had a permanent exhibition. If you answered yes to that and you can't find a way to link it to the outside world, I'd question whether that's the best story and to sink your time and resources to. And of course, this begins to be newsworthy. Now, we carry a burden as cultural publicists because we are often telling stories that, and by the way you guys, through this presentation I'm trying to use journalistic terms like Evergreen, like Newspeg because it's the kind of thing that we need to become familiar with and you will know many of them anyway and many of them have entered the culture. But our news can be ignored sometimes because stories about our collection can be told this week, next week, or even a year from now. So it's up to us to find some way to make it where we tap into the public consciousness, connect to the community, as someone said earlier in their response. They said it just perfectly. So it's finding a way to connect with what your community is caring about that moment. You know, I'm sure you've noticed that most every February at Valentine's Day it's not unusual to see museum exhibitions. I remember the Met about a decade ago had a wonderful exhibition of medieval books that were shaped like hearts. Of course, that exhibition was on view during, you know, and on Valentine's Day. So, you know, if you have a selection of poems handwritten by Walt Whitman, don't whatever you do issue a press release about the interest, you know, about how interesting that is and issue it two days before Christmas. You'll get nowhere. Think of Walt Whitman's birthday, which I think is, oh, Lordy, I actually even knew it might be June 3rd or something, but send news release out on Walt Whitman's birthday. Now, another way to create a news peg is to collaborate with other collections in your region, other institutions in your region, or even sometimes profit organizations, but it's a way of making your story bigger. And going back to the Walt Whitman example, so you have a really interesting collection of poems, drafts handwritten by Walt Whitman, but you know that two towns over a historical society has some amazing photographs taken in the last years of his life and even one of the early Edison sound cartridges. Consider collaborating with that historical organization and even making that consortium larger. Maybe we're thinking about a Walt Whitman's festival that again is time to his birth or death. It's about trying to collaborate to make a story so large that the press can't ignore it and wouldn't want to. Along those same lines, think about piggybacking. Say you are a museum 30, 50-some miles away from Wintichur and Wintichur is mounting an exhibition of precious porcelain statuettes of a certain period. We'll say that you have American stoneware statuettes from that same period. Pull those out, make an exhibition of them. It can be a small exhibition, but open your exhibition at the same time as Wintichur. You're not hurting them, you're helping them, and it certainly offers you an opportunity to quote-unquote piggyback on the Wintichur exhibition. And again, I would just say in a larger kind of way, the more you can exhibit work from your collection, the more you can bring people into your museum and gallery, the more opportunities you'll have for media coverage. Now, I want to pause for a moment just to say that one of my jobs as a museum publicist is really trying to figure out how not only to tell stories on the cultural pages, but how to get stories in, say, the real estate section, the science section perhaps, and of course the travel section. And I wanted to say to you today that travel sections and travel editors may be your most underused resource right now. I can tell you that the travel editors of the major papers throughout the country, whether it be the LA Times, Sacramento Bee, the Omaha Paper, the Fort Worth Star Telegram, I can tell you right now that those travel editors are really eager to hear about daytime trips throughout the country to kind of package those and share them with their readers, or make it easy for them. Think about the right season of the year, again we're thinking seasonally. I don't know if it's cherry blossom time for you or if your big season might be in August, but think about when you might suggest a daytime trip to Saratoga or a daytime trip to Atlanta that will include, of course, your museum or library. I mentioned the importance of exhibitions if it's possible. I know some of you can only mount very small exhibitions, some none at all, but when you do have an exhibition, it's so important to try to use it and in a way squeeze every little bit of notice you can out of it. One way of doing that, and I was talking to my colleague Nancy Reddamel who's going to be talking later this afternoon who's at Shelburne up in Vermont, and she was telling me how smart the publicists at Shelburne are. Because what they'll do typically is when they have a major exhibition they'll invite journalists from, you know, the Vermont area into the museum for a behind-the-scenes look at the preparing for that collection that's coming up. They show works in the process of being conserved, you know, otherwise they give a walk-through of a collection storage, but it's all about showing the journalists how they prepare for an exhibition. And what does that get you? Goodwill. But more importantly, it can get you an advanced story, the kind of story that runs a month before an exhibition or a month and a half that will kind of create a drum roll or a buzz about the show and give people time to prepare to travel to it. Now, I use the word drum roll. I don't know how many of you saw this article it was in The Times just on Tuesday, today's Thursday. It was in The Science Times, top of the fold, and it was all about an exhibition that has opened, I believe, this week or perhaps last week at The Whitney. And it's an example of thinking outside the box and not just thinking that we always have to go to entertainment or arts editors. The publicist at The Whitney saw a story in the difficulties of conserving the work of this modern artist, Paul Tech, who you guys apparently use as completely gross material from, I think I even mentioned ground beef, but was it hair? I mean, you know, really icky, icky organic material. But that's the whole story is how do you conserve objects like that? And it's an example of The Times going outside the art section and making a science story. And one point that I'm obviously making is kind of, you know, the subtext of all the talk today is that cultural coverage rarely just happens. You can bet that The Whitney was planning to go to The Science Times weeks before they did. And they knew that it was part of their strategy and plan that they would do that. And just one more thing to say about how to wrestle up coverage in advance of an exhibition. You know, if you're mounting either a temporary or a personal exhibition and you are hoisting something into your gallery with a crane, all I can say to you is think photo op, photo op, photo op. You've got an opportunity for a great picture, an interesting picture like this one. Now for those of you who are freaking out at this moment and thinking, oh my God, she's talking so fast and I don't know how to go to a photo editor, I would just say Sandra Beckwith in her book on publicity has a really great section on how to go to the photo editor and what you need to do for a photo op. Just a little bit more before I get off the subject of how to make a news peg, how to create a story that has to be told now. Because if you don't have a story that needs to be told now, your story is going to languish and it's never going to run. So again, say you have the best collection of baseball ephemera in the country, maybe 19th century stuff. Maybe if you're in St. Louis Historical Society, you've got great stuff, early modern, staying mutual. Again, don't release a press release on that in December. When are we as a culture, as Americans thinking baseball? Well, we're thinking baseball when the season opens. I think that's April. God knows I could be wrong, but I think it's April. Maybe it's more about when the little league seasons opens in your town. I think in some towns in Pennsylvania, I know you're crazy about little leagues. So maybe that's the news peg, or maybe it's the World Series. But that's the moment to send out a release with fabulous photographs on your important collection. Now, it would be easier if I could tell you that there was one time, one moment, when you needed to call your newspaper, a magazine like the Smithsonian, television, and radio. But unfortunately, things are a little bit more complicated than that. I know this slide looks like it's a diagram of nuclear fusion, so please, what I'm talking about is not that complicated, but it is true that we need to call magazines like the Smithsonian almost six months earlier than we hope a story will appear. So if you're thinking you would like the story of your baseball collection to appear with the opening day of the baseball season, I would recommend to you that you call Smithsonian or Sports Illustrated, whatever you think likely, a good six months in advance. Now, I'm not going to go into timing more. I've put lead times here, and you'll have the use of this PowerPoint. I just want to assure you, you know, don't freak out. It's not that hard. If you're afraid that you're overwhelmed by the sense of when to call, I would just say if you're going to air, air on calling earlier rather than later. Now, oh, good, good, good. I'm seeing wonderful. And Ann, I put up a little aside question here if some of you could other, if they could list their sources there. That's great. I really appreciate it, Susan. Now, oh, good. Yep, you get to know people personally. It's wonderful that you're using Twitter at something that I need. This is all the way it's done. Thank you so much. Vivian Solek and Monroe, you were doing it just the way I do it and the way it should be done. Again, as someone who's been doing nothing else for 20 years, you would think, you know, I right now do my work on behalf of museums around the country primarily by reading, reading, reading and keeping up the byline. You know, obviously I know people at this point but the world of cultural journalism is being so roiled by layoffs, et cetera, et cetera that we don't, I can't even keep up with the changes. So as a group, today we're really, by reading bylines, it's the safest way to do it and the best and of course it's not the only way. I'm looking to see some of these other answers here, compiling from mastheads, yes, yes, small town. You see them in the grocery store. I'm sure they run from you, but yes, that's fabulous. It's, I'm glad you're not using now antique mailing lists. It's worse than doing nothing in some ways. Okay, I'm going to try to move on here. Really appreciate these submissions. So, let me see. Again, thank you for those who said social media. Now, there are probably those among you who feel like I don't have the resources or knowledge to do NAPR. I probably need a list of 500 names and I need a professional list. I don't have it. Well, all I would say to you is no. When I began a media campaign for a major project, I sit down and create a press plan, which is nothing more than a list of likely prospects, the places where I think this story should be told. And frankly, that list could be as few as 10 names or as many as, you know, 50. But for you, I would say, think of your wish list. Do you really see this on CBS Sunday? Then put it down. Do you really see this in the New York Times? Because you've seen other things that are no more interesting but similar. Then I say yes, put that on your list. But don't feel that you need to have a massive commercial list. And as you think of who you might contact, consider the medium. I hope that you have fabulous images because that really drives the story these days. And if you do, think print. If you have a curator or your director is really fabulously interesting, great interview. Think radio as well. It doesn't mean you won't go to print, too, of course. But try to think of what, you know, your strengths are. The strengths of the stories are. If I can leave you with one thought today is do not depend on email blast to get your idea across. It will not work. Do not even worry if you don't have a news release or a fancy press kit. The most important tool, or should I say weapon, but I'll say tool, the most important tool you have is the telephone, a follow-up email, and the willingness to contact a journalist one-on-one. Now I'll tell you how I do it. I contact the most important outlets first. That doesn't mean the most important outlets in the world. It means the most important outlets to you at this moment for the story. And that might be the local Saratoga shopkeeper more than the New York Times. That's fine. But I call my most important people first. Who knows, I might get hit by a bus. I want to do the most important first. Although I also, of course, go to the longest lead time at the same time kind of simultaneously because I need to. By the way, I'm loving what I'm seeing people say I hope, and I'm sure everybody's reading them. I love it that people call the news outlets and ask for updates. They appreciate, you know, quoting Billy Chabot and Auburn, they appreciate not being bombarded by the wrong person. It's all so true. Now one thing I'd like to say to you is, if you, it's make freelance journalism in your area your friend. Because they work for a living placing stories and therefore they do it better than you. They know how to do it better than you and they're avid to find stories to make a living. So you make any freelance journalist you know of in your community, your friend. Sometimes I use the white pages to find a freelance journalist when I've seen a byline. You know, call them at home and, you know, apologize on the front and say, I'm calling from the so-and-so library, please if I'm calling improperly at home let me know but I did want to tell you that's something coming up. You know, if you preface it like that I can just about promise you'll be received with respect. Call in the mornings because people tend to close in the afternoon. Make sure that they know that you're a museum or library because you are there serving the public and people understand that. Let them know right away the timing involved. Okay, I'm checking right this moment my stopwatch to make sure, okay? I'm gonna, I believe that a lot of you guys can read this and some of these tips are really important. Always go directly to someone, never use general mailboxes, it just won't help you. The more personal you can make the contact, the better. And one reason is because the journalists don't want a story that they think is being shopped around everywhere. And by sending around a personal note you're communicating that you want them to notice a story that this is not something you're sending to every John Dick and Harry or whatever that Dick and Harry is. In bed, don't attach news releases. Don't over design, don't think that other means because you're small, maybe you're a small library, don't think that the big guys are creating beautiful design press releases and you aren't. It actually works against you to over design a press release because it begins to look like a promotional object. All you have is a subject line. You know, one other reason it's great to write a personal note to the press is that you can say things that you can't say in a press release. Like maybe in a press release you don't want to say one of the objects in your collections went for a quarter of a million at auction. Well, you can embed the release and in a personal note you can say that and it'll pique the interest of the journalist and you won't be saying something inappropriate in a press release. You know, when I first began working 23 years ago or so, always when I sent an envelope I wanted to prove how professional I was by having it look perfect. That's not what I want to prove now. Now when I send an envelope I write on hand so that the journalist will know that there's a person behind the message. I also try to send things by hand or by FedEx. Main Street National Publications often don't open the U.S. mail. Sorry, not much to say here but I'm hoping that you'll take advantage of every free opportunity. Nothing is more important than good photography except maybe your children. Now I'm going to leave you with hopefully what you'll feel like a two-gif. Right here is the... Oh, it's not so hard, Jamie. I know you're seeing it but it's not so hard. If you choose three people to go to and do it right, you'll do better than doing 24, 100 names. So this can be done. This is the email address for finding your local AP representative. And I'm also right here leaving you with the email address and the phone number of the new National Bureau Chief of the Times whose job is to ferret out cultural stories around the country. It's not Arthur Stolzberg or the publisher of the Times. You may be familiar with the name. I think this is his son so it's someone who's there as a reporter to be interested in you. So anyway, that's it for the formal presentation and I thank you so much. Susan, you want to take over? Yeah, well, I think at this point we're going to have a conversation with you and Judith and some of the questions. And I did want to bring up this slide again because there was great curiosity in the beginning about this particular publication so the audience can get the information they need there. I am going to actually start from the sum of what I read right at the end questions about someone works at a museum where they're not allowed to talk about the value of a slide. Yeah, I was just saying that. That's Teresa, Harley Wilson. Thank you. And Teresa, that's exactly why you don't put it in a news release. I would only send that information to it. You don't broadcast that to 100 or 500 or 1,000 journalists. But if there's someone you know and it's a contact, yes, in an email you can say, by the by, it's not for public record but, or you could say by and by it is in the public record that this has fetched so-and-so on auction. So, yes, you have to be careful on how you do it but that's the beauty of talking to a press just one-on-one and not trying to do a lot of things at once, talking to a lot of people at once. And the emphasis is also on the story behind and how you're caring for that collection, right? Yes, that's a real opportunity I think for most everybody here today. I think the public has been, I mean, I think there are polls that tell us this, that the public has been proven to be really interested in the back story of how collections are cared for, how they're stored. Sometimes that can be, mean placing a story in the home section of your paper and it becomes a how-to story like how do you care for lemons or how do you care for antique woolens. But I think that's always a kind of how-to behind-the-scenes story. Judith, do you want to add your insight on to this? Yeah, I agree with almost everything Anne said although I will say this and that is that, you know, Anne gave you a lot of suggestions that may or may not apply to everyone. For example, not every journalist wants to have a phone call before an email. So, you know, you have to get to know the people if you can. And somebody may prefer an email first, for example, and then set up a call. But basically what she said was really strong information. I want to add one other thing. Freelancers in particular, but lots of other, you know, reporters as well, and I've been both, are often seeking stories and not necessarily during your business hours or can't reach you. One thing I'm completely surprised by when I'm doing that on my own is that many websites don't have press information online. There's no name, there's no number. There might be a, you know, press at so-and-so-museum.org, which may yield a response five days later, if any at all. If your organization doesn't have a press name, contact number, link with past, press releases, and images, that's someplace where you can start because people like me are also looking, you know, taking our own initiative to look for stories as well. That's just the start. Great. And I'm going to ask you to navigate to, I got a request for seeing the slide with all the information we need to make clear to the media contact we're trying to make. But meanwhile, Judith, could you tell us a little bit about how do you find a freelance person? You know, if you're looking for a freelance journalist. I think it's the same way you find a staff person. You notice their bylines. Yeah, I would say that too. Okay. Curiosity about that. And again, I would say don't be afraid to use the most common sensical methods. If you, if it's a byline in your local paper, well, they're probably using the white pages is going to be effective. That's absolutely right. I'm completely surprised sometimes when people say I've tried to find you, I've tried to find you. I mean, the white pages, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you can easily find my, I mean, on my blog is there's an email, so it's, I think that it's easier than people think sometimes. Right. With respect to what's newsworthy, I'm going back to that, how do you, how do you create value for things that you see as newsworthy, but perhaps there's some question there. Maybe it's newsworthy to a donor who Oh, that's it. I was thinking about that earlier before this presentation, and that's always can be true. You know, you've just received a donation of you know, maybe correspondence from World War II and maybe it's not particularly all that newsworthy, because there's similar things in similar archives. How do you create value? You know, if something is not really newsworthy, I think you can just do the best you can and Judith may want to weigh in, but I think you can stand on your head and maybe not succeed, but basically you can create value by doing the things that we've been talking about today. It takes a lot of research, but really researching the objects and finding any thread of interesting anecdotes. You know, finding why does this collection matter? And frankly if after your research you come up with the answer to that, it's probably something you're just going to have to send a press release out about to satisfy the donor, but you may not be able to get the media coverage to the degree you wish. Let me throw one other idea in to link it to something that's important going on today. If you have something that linked to an election in the past that was interesting and might, you know, link to this election today, or if you have something that relates to the financial crisis, you might be able to somehow use that letter, use that book, use that something in your collection to link to something that the general public is focused on today. Okay. Erin O'Malley also said she's had great luck targeting a specific group like a labor exhibit to labor groups in the area. Fabulous, yeah, yeah. Erin, do you call I guess do you call the Fort Worth Star Telegram first before you put it on the internet and I'll be interested to see if you do that. So that's what I often do. I often call the major paper first and try to get an article there and then I put the press release out in the world. That's because so often it will mean more to your local paper to get the story first. And there's quite a bit of chatter going on in the chat area about the issue of attachments. Who will open them and who won't. There's a lot. I totally agree with with the idea that maybe it's particularly freelancers, I don't know, but we're not going to open attachments and it's not necessarily the safety. Some of that is. We don't know you. We don't recognize the email address, but also it's the time. I got a press release the other day which I was completely had four attachments to it. Four attachments. All word, all different different items. A very short paragraph explaining what was in each one. Not in each one really, what the overall theme was. And there was no way. There wasn't enough in the first paragraph to interest me to open four attachments to find out what the story was going to be. I think most of it or enough that is going to intrigue the recipient's interest has to be in the main body and again, so much of what we're talking about today is making it easy for that journalist to absorb your message. Don't make it hard for them and by attaching you're making it hard for them. Absolutely. Should I jump in and address Rose Daley's question? Yeah, right ahead. Thank you. Rose, I see you've asked a really good question. How do you appeal to the general public while maintaining a certain academic integrity? Now, I hope I can say this right without wandering, but I remember reading somewhere once that kids for a while were reading less well because their primers were being so dumbed down that they weren't as interesting. And here is a moment to say sometimes when you really grasp a project including, I mean that how do you know that something's academic? It's really about why it matters and if that involves some detailed academic stuff don't don't undersell your audience any bit of information that makes the case for why something matters can be included. I will say it's so important to avoid jargon avoid artistic jargon for those of you who deal with the contemporary arts just avoid that horrible jargon or a scientific jargon but right in real English but don't feel you have to dumb down the story. There's a question from Julie about it was a longer question but paraphrase fear of bad review from the press if you do put something out there is this the loss of control that you were talking about earlier? Yes you can as a museum or a library you can take out half page ad in your newspaper and you know exactly what that ad is going to say and look like but you don't know how an exhibition is going to be reviewed or how one of your major initiatives is going to be received by the press but I've been doing this for 20 years as I keep saying sorry I don't mean to repeat but yet I'm still a bit of an idealist I feel that I work in a fair world environment I feel like the press wants to report on news worthy exhibitions and projects that benefit their readers or their listeners so I wouldn't be afraid of bad reviews if you know if you're doing good work you may receive middling reviews but you have no choice actually do you to go out into the world and just kind of have that kind of courage actually there's so many voices today that one bad review isn't really going to be all that important even if it is in the most important outlet in your hometown or a national outlet I rarely see reviews that are you know killers the way somebody used to kill a Broadway show um so I would take the chance there are many voices do you get heard if you're a paid advertiser more than just sending in well I've worked at three or four publications as a staff person and many as a freelancer I have never seen that access maybe they hide it from me as a journalist but I've never seen that you know an ad will do will guarantee good coverage or more coverage or anything like that I really would like to from my vantage point say the same things you know again working for museums that are very large and working for museums that are small you know purchasing an ad will not at all encourage more coverage and less small maybe tourist publications are very small local papers where it's a mom and pop thing but if you're thinking about mainstream national outlets don't in a way it's good for you because most of the people here today represent many of you represent smaller organizations and if you've got a good story idea that should make you feel good because you've got just as good a shot of it as someone say from the Guggenheim or the MOMA with a very big advertising budget let's address Amy Sanderson's question because I think it wraps up a lot of things can you see that there and I think Amy it's either or situation and I think that actually piggybacking on might get coverage that you wouldn't ordinarily get in any case and then I have a second comment on it which is advancing your museum mission and that is anytime you deal with journalists it's really the best encounter the best relationship is when it's a two way street and that something that has impact for you also has impact for the journalist who'll come back to you and begin to build a trust relationship with you and I just re-posted Amy's question there for people to refresh she was asking about piggybacking oh sorry yes I should have repeated it there's a lot to process here yeah right I'm looking at some of the questions and um you want to take one or I do there's just well let me oh I see that there are a number of people who are rightly pushing back at me about what I said with about an email note you know so much of this is about using the judgment so I guess um when I would when I embed a news release and say something in that news release that I in a note that I would not say in the release yeah I'm really careful because once you send something out in a personal message in an email it is out in the world with that journalist so um I often find there are things I can say that advance the story and sometimes it's not I mean this is not about releasing secret information I would never recommend that you do that sometimes it's as simple as you know there you have your news release and it's embedded in the release and maybe it's as simple as writing a note that says a dear Ariel just want you to know that I've got great uh B-roll footage you're not going to necessarily say in your news release that you have great B-roll footage so it's in your note it's advancing the story a little bit to that journalist so please don't think that I'm suggesting that you can without impunity release information that's sensitive there's a bit of a conversation about how you work with internal marketing departments and not stepping on toes um and perhaps that's where a curator has an advantage of telling the story again yeah I think the only advice I have is to try to work with them um and make them understand that you can help them do their job I think they're changing so much um you know it used to be that press offices were the owners of information in a museum or library you know they uh they were the only place that uh the only voice that was heard and they would decide that the director was the director who should comment on something or somebody else but it's you know now we live in a world of social media where some of your curators are tweeting and some are you know on Facebook and it's kind of perhaps a good webinar would be on that subject because it's a challenge to communication and press office people you know you have to face the fact that the world is changing and um work with your marketing colleagues uh I know like a colleague of mine is the director of marketing at the Guggenheim and another colleague is the director of um public relations at the Guggenheim and they work together obviously I mean when um Betsy Ennis knows that there have been positive reviews on an exhibition she makes sure that her marketing colleague knows that and the museum tweets uh excerpts from these positive reviews so there's a you know these two uh professionals these two women are working together to get the word out using their different um daily wicks and expertise I'm seeing that um from Aaron O'Malley that they're using social media as well um you know it's hard to overestimate to all of for all of us today to realize what a watershed period we've been going through in history because just to give you a example I remember learning that through a I think it was a puke uh poll in a very um professionally done poll that in 2005 there was something like 5000 reporters in the country who identified themselves as arts reporters and a year ago that had you know gone down to 2500 it had actually had so um we're working in a very different environment and social media is what more and more the remaining press is using to questions are going so fast I can't isolate one here is there anyone right well and it's not just questions but they're helping each other they're helping yeah I'm seeing that let me see this is the challenge as a presenter not to get so sucked into what's happening on the side because it's fascinating isn't it it is fascinating in fact I wanted to say something that should all press releases including blogs like it's Kimberly trick it from orange um should all press releases including blogs go through the communications department you know what Kimberly even though the world is changing as rapidly as you know we're talking about I would say yes you have complete chaos otherwise so yes they should go through your office and I hate to say this as a reporter but I think the answer is yes too I mean obviously we spend some part of our time trying to get around the press office in certain cases but um I still think the institution can't be conflicting with one another that's confusing to everybody I see that there's a question by Jean Goodman from Arthur Dale um you know we also have a full-time staff of one okay do you have any advice for organizations that do not have a PR staff you know Jean all I would say is um again that word triage you know decide what is really urgent what what is really the urgent story to tell decide one or two places to go with it make sure that when you call someone you're completely prepared and you understand why that project matters but don't you're not going to have time to create news releases and do all that stuff so it's about trying not to do everything but not losing sight of what's really and truly newsworthy and the maybe two or three places that would be most likely to tell that story and most beneficial to your institution let's take the Tim Kenny question there what about tips for getting um collections that aren't in exhibits I think that goes back to some of what we were saying before and let's elaborate um finding an angle for it finding it has it just been conserved is it related to some event right now has somebody come through that you know made a made a big uh fuss about it that has a name that's recognizable in the community or or maybe getting somebody that's with a name recognizable in the community to visit it um or uh you know relating it in some way let me give you an example that happened just yesterday and they did it last year as well the Nelson Atkins Museum uh send out a press release with a list and possibly the images as well or making the images available online um of various paintings works of art in its collection that are related and could be used to illustrate Christmas stories wow they did that last year I know because I blogged about it last year I thought it was a good idea and um I don't think they'd do it again unless it had somehow worked I thought that was a really good way to um do what Kim just asked about dying for you to answer the question from Haley chambers is there such a thing as too much press well in my opinion as a publicist you can probably guess what I'm going to say but I would say the only time you might feel that you've over saturated the local papers is if you are planning to launch a major project in the future and you fear that you've so saturated your local papers that that might be ignored so you know it's about if you can and I know everybody's stressed but it's looking ahead to the future and making decisions about what's really important to you and if frankly your newspaper will pick up anything that you uh release or any news that you disseminate you might want to begin making decisions to be sure that your most important projects will be given the prominence that they deserve I agree and I actually think there's a risk to of bombarding reporters whether they're freelance or staff with too much information too many opportunities because at some point they begin to not take you seriously I actually think readers may be in that situation as well not all but some you know again talking about email which is you know again I think it's a tool that is so important now but you don't want to be some institution that the minute a journalist sees your email moniker that you're just deleted right away and that can happen if you're pelting that journalist with too much news information there was a little flurry of conversation around Josh Williams question concerning the decline of reading newspapers any thought on that well we wish it would stop but I don't know how to get it to reverse I think for me it goes back to that issue that I mentioned earlier which is that there isn't just one voice anymore there are many voices and sometimes getting information to a local website a blogger the radio station the TV station wherever you can think of that's where people are getting their news that's where you have to go right and in fact Judy asked about public radio if you have any tips specific to them well I almost have to laugh as I offer this tip because it comes in part from a understanding failure you know I just I find that the only way I succeed with having a story told on public radio is by going to the correspondent and if I'm wrong about this please I know you'll jump in on the chat thing but I find that the editors in Washington are perhaps too overwhelmed or for some other reason they just prefer to work through their freelancers so how do you find that person in your region again if it's sometimes it's you know it's really often about using your connections I sometimes call my colleagues at larger at the large institutions museums here in New York and I say you know would it be possible for me to ask you for the email and so and people will typically share emails they may not share personal numbers but you know generally whether it be the white pages or asking friends you can often find that NPR correspondent and just another thing on radio period and TV period which is if you've got sound for a radio story you're in a a lot better position than if you have just words right and the same with TV if you have some intriguing video or they can come and make some intriguing video you've got a lot more chance of getting on there the thing in TV which I've been in a little bit myself is you know you write to the video no matter what the story is you write to the video and radio reports without sound don't usually get as much time or even you know opportunity as those with sound I'd like to address Stephanie Miller just because I so sympathize I mean I really am not saying it's a piece of cake because national journalists how do you get through to national journalists when you're only pitching them periodically you know you're not pitching them enough to become one of their someone they'll pick up the phone for what I usually do and I face that too is I do try to find personal email and an office number maybe even you know again a home office number I do try to call them but what do I do if they're not going to pick up my number because they don't know my name and again this is just what I do but I often leave a message I say and I try to keep it short but really pithy you know I'll say my name is Ann Edgar I'm leaving a message about the largest festival ever devoted to Walt Whitman and I'm doing so on behalf of the Miller Museum I'm going to be emailing you shortly I know you get a lot of emails so thank you for looking and then I email it you know and then try to go from there but you know again it is a problem okay we should probably address some of these questions up here from Angela Gaffney what if there are only two newspapers in the region I'm not sure I'm exactly interpreting your question right but I think as I mentioned earlier there are other alternatives blogs websites other places that might give you publicity great and how about Reginald's question yeah a really interesting one when you're in an area and two institutions are closely connected that they're actually in competition well you know all you can try to do is to outsmart them and outfleet foot them I mean I know of so many museums offices where they have a designated press officer and they have an assistant and they really have a budget for PR but they're sluggish and they're ledden if you if you are really smart in what you identify as newsworthy and you're really targeted to the person you go to you know you can often make an effect that really out of scale with your budget that's beyond what one might think I will say Reginald that what you really need is really strong visuals because whether it's press or television or even radio because visuals can peak the interest of you know help make a story fuller in someone's eye and head so I the smaller you are the less I would skimp on photography cost I actually I have a question Reginald so what is the outcome you're trying to get are you trying to drive a tendon to exhibitions or are you just trying to raise the profile of the museum are you trying to some press departments are very key to the image of the person running the institution can you be a little bit more specific about what the goal is that your museum is after he says increase visitation to our site okay so if it's about visitation then I think I agree with everything that Ann said and I also repeat try other outlets just try what aren't they doing what area can you do some specialized PR specialized marketing to audiences that are not reading the daily or watching TV and you can reach them a different way if there's anything in that in your community Erin opened up a discussion about YouTube and what kinds of videos are most successful and well this is interesting I might just just by chance I was reception the other night where I met somebody who works with Google and it's pretty high up at Google and I asked him about the YouTube channel for museums because I've been noticing that they're really not populated all that well and he agreed from taking the cosmic view from on high YouTube gets lots of traffic but not very many museums have had luck that he knew of or that I know of getting traction in your, with their own channel so I would say to you that it's a matter of your resources to spare and can put them into YouTube there's nothing wrong with it but if you're trying to spread resources thinly I'd re-examine whether that's the channel you want to operate as your own channel that isn't to say you can't put something special up there because you don't need a channel to put something on YouTube I would like to mention as well that the afternoon's webinar will address YouTube among other social media outlets so I hope you guys can stay over for that Nancy Revenal and we'll be addressing it and let's see what we got here you know I've talked a little bit about the importance of contacting journalists one-on-one anytime you can to make yourself real and to make your story real because the best things happen through a conversation but what do you do once you've sent you've left a message perhaps on someone's voicemail you know a short message that you're sending news you've sent the news release you've embedded it maybe you've written a note so they know it's coming right to them what do you do if you still don't get a journalist you know I you jump in Judy well I would like to tell you that I'm able to answer every email which is the way I get most of my most approaches from fresh people or PR people unless they know me like Ann who might call me and I have to say I'd like to be able to answer all of them one cannot the number of emails that I get in a day and I'm not even at a newspaper as they say I'm a freelancer it's impossible to answer all of them and many of them are totally unrelated so I don't even think that the people sending them a text and answer you know and again from the vantage point of a publicist what I would do is perhaps call you probably will get a voice machine just to say that you've left the press release there's not a lot more you can do now if you're being ignored I really think give it up you know the idea is oh Amy thank you you're just keying into exactly what I was going to say the important thing is to try to do it as well as possible right in the beginning of this process which is make your subject line as I want to say catchy but that's not the only thing, as catchy as possible and Amy McDonnell from Yale is asking what makes a successful subject line Judy will have her take what I believe might be the case I think it's important to have your institution's name because it separates you from the other pitches that that reporter might be getting from galleries or other for profit things that gives you more weight in the community but I also try to have the subject line be similar to a headline like the Yale Gallery announces New Venture with of course you also have to make sure it's not too long because it gets cut off I agree with exactly what you said make sure that people know the recipient knows that it's coming from your institution somehow and make it like a headline let's see lots of social media questions but I think that will be better addressed this afternoon to Josh Williams in Washington, Arkansas other national outlets that are free Josh do you mean free for the reader to pick up do you mean or do you mean free to have a story appear in them if you're talking about the story you know again today we're talking about how you achieve editorial coverage in a newspaper, magazine, television, or radio we're not talking about purchasing advertising so everything we're talking about today can only be free right great, great point wow we have we have really gone through a lot of ground here haven't we this is exciting I'm scrolling through to see if there are major themes that we perhaps haven't addressed and I'm sure that the audience will let us know meanwhile though because I don't want them to forget about this I'm going to put a little link up here in your upper left corner so that the audience can open up this will open in a separate window for the evaluation for the session somebody asked a pre I'll jump in here somebody asked a pre a question earlier on before the session began about the best ways to initiate contact in developing a non-going relationship and I'm going to address that a little bit and it stems a little bit from what we were just talking about which is don't waste one thing is once you have it as we said being inundated is a sure way to make them hit the lead on everything you send and not give you the time that you need to sell your story but also that's the negative part the positive part is making sure or trying to ensure that the story you give them is as exciting and interesting and has texture with facts but has some behind the scenes information or something that makes it a very rich story if a reporter knows that you've delivered for them in the past they're going to be far more willing to talk with you, sit down with you figure out what makes a good story that's a win-win for both of you one thing that Judy said that I think is so important that I probably haven't emphasized enough today in my presentation is that you can feel free to consider a journalist a resource again you don't want to waste their time but if you call someone particularly an editor at a paper and you find that a story doesn't work for them now or it's not quite right for their beat you know, ask well gee, is there someone else that you think would be a better, be more appropriate for this and you'll often find that that journalist will take a moment to help you true, I think that's very true I want to answer a technical question that I've gotten a couple of and I'm going to pull this slide over top, we are recording these webinars so after the event you can go back to this link and eventually there will be a link to the archive to the recording and also a copy of the slides several of you have asked for the slides so you know how to get to that information I'm seeing Kim Kenny talk about how when her local reporter comes she gives him copies of the text in the exhibit all of that is so helpful absolutely and it helps the journalist write with what Judy just called texture which is gives them a real feel for why that story matters not just about the objects in the exhibition how old they are but really the life of them I was watching that I also wanted to put up the reminder that the two o'clock eastern session is continuing this conversation dealing with social media specifically and somebody caught that I may have had a typo in that link I have to look away from the screen in order to answer that question and I don't want to do that right now the correct link there but these will not be available instantaneously because we're going to turn our attention to setting up for the afternoon session and then get that stuff posted later takes a little bit of time to process this so let's have more content questions come in as we have the last few minutes yeah Troy Lambert has a good point is yes get to the point you know in a way as a museum person you're a translator anyway you know you it's about understanding the importance of the objects in your collections but you're always kind of translating to the public whether it be through tours or exhibition signage why something matters and it's certainly true when you talk to the media as well so it's about getting to the point using real language not any kind of jargon okay great I see somebody here who Lynn Robertson and it's saying actually to her colleagues but it says you have to dedicate a specific time each week for doing publicity and stick to it I can't agree more because I've been in a situation of working in a small museum where not only was I responsible for publicity but I was responsible for doing the newsletter buying the advertising doing the advertising copy and I have to say those things always seemed in my experience to take precedence over making those phone calls because you know they're deadlines with the news the newsletter the directors you know breathing down your neck so it's really I think it's really important to devote a specific amount of time because publicity is a great thing to let drift you can always wait till next week you think and then you realize that you've lost any you no longer have any time to promote something and let's actually address let's address what happens if you fail to get the coverage that you want on the on you know your first try you've been working hard to get an exhibition covered or an archive covered or a conservation project covered and what what what do you do if you failed I think you and you may want to jump in but I think you try to turn that into a relationship and not a failure yeah absolutely if you really chose something that had news value and you went right to the point if someone said earlier and the journalist will you know respect your effort and if you don't waste his or her time I think it then it's about using that and it's you know the next time you call you can even say Ariel you know my name is Ann Edgar and I talked to you a couple of months ago and I really appreciated the time you were able to give me I called you then about this I'm calling you now about so you can even very quickly a little more quickly maybe than I did just now but remind them that you've spoken to them before and that they were helpful and Michelle also asked the question about how do you make an annual event new each year how do you send out the information on that she was you know I don't know that I have maybe Judy or something the only thing I would say is if you would work internally to try to always have something different something added something a little bit different yeah I what I would say is that a journalist isn't kind of no different from your constituency so what do you do for the people that you're trying to get back every year to make it new that's what you would emphasize to the reporter and you know sometimes an event will an annual event becomes part of the emotional or life you know calendar of the people in your community like everyone looks forward to the garden tour every May so you know you kind of work to create a niche in the life of the community where when you call about the annual garden tour the journalist understands that it's important to run something because the journalist understands that people in the community look forward to that annual event now let's get to Beth's question is there a day of the week when it's easier to contact reporters generally not I would say I mean there are some people if there's a columnist right certain days of the week then you know not to talk to them necessarily the day before but also if there's an art section only once a week you might you might know not to call them the day before but to call them earlier than that I would say no let's go back to what Anne said in her presentation it's just better to try them in the morning than it is in the afternoon and how the trees asked about how about excuse me how about media or overkill I'm thinking media events too that's kind of my next question I think there is definitely something as overkill as I think I mentioned there you know if you're hitting them with several emails a day a week or you're just not getting any residence residence whatsoever with the messages that you send but you keep sending them I suspect reporters will become jaded and they're not going to pay any attention to what you're offering you know in a way too I'm looking at some of the questions that were submitted before this webinar in a way they can be liberating for you because if you're the librarian and you're a one woman band or a one man band remember that you don't feel that you're losing anything because you're not contacting your local paper once a week there's no recipe for the right amount of time to call it should be driven by what's newsworthy so maybe that can relieve a little of your anxiety as well this question about getting people in hard topics I would go back to something that we very very briefly touched on and that is it doesn't necessarily have to be the arts or culture that you go there maybe you can get somebody who's interested in another part of the section the national section somebody who's writing on science somebody outside the normal person you might have a good luck there or just because it's hard you know I would just try to find an angle that appeals to the reporter that you're used to dealing with Anne? Actually I got distracted because I was looking at Robin, I'm sorry I was looking at Robin van Alken's input a kiss of death this into press release on a Friday that's probably true that's probably true Actually Friday late afternoon if it's something about the future is it not late afternoon on a Friday afternoon is not a bad idea to try to reach somebody for something that's not tomorrow you know because people do tend to be difficult to reach on Friday afternoon and if the reporter doesn't have a deadline it might be a little bit of a quiet time where you might brouch a topic that is going to take or an exhibition or something that's going to take place six weeks four weeks whatever down the line I think maybe Friday afternoon might be a good idea to try a phone call or an email I mean yeah you might reach someone on a Friday afternoon particularly that kind of one-on-one contact Okay well I am going to suggest that maybe we wrap up here with some thank yous to Ann and Judith and to the crowd that's here what an inspired conversation this afternoon of we've gone all over the place but covered a huge amount of territory and there's more to come this afternoon there will still be, will be continuing much of the same but with this emphasis on social media and so I want to thank our guest today and invite the audience to take a break for an hour and then come back for the second part of our webinar series so thank you both. Well thank you everybody really, thanks very much. From here too I've learned a lot I'm actually sorry some of these things were flying by so quickly because it's very interesting for me at least to hear from from the other side not the one side but from you know you're learning your perspective is very interesting. Alright thank you Thank you