We’ve sent a number of press releases about Pajama School – stories from the life of a homeschool graduate to local media outlets and to national homeschool association leaders, but now I’m keeping my eye open for other opportune connections. For example, USA Today ran an article the end of last week about homeschooling. The story was written by Greg Toppo (the national K-12 education reporter for USA Today), so I began looking for a way to contact him directly. The search proved highly unsuccessful. There is no handy list of editors with contact forms on the USA Today website, and none of the articles include a link to connect directly with the writer. I did find what appears to be his facebook page, but this seems like a highly inappropriate way to go about making the connection. 🙂
In my search, I came across this helpful list of recommendations on How to Send a Press Release. Apparently, it’s akin to spam to send press releases to an editor without making prior contact. There is a drop down menu option of Press Release on this feedback page, but it seems less than professional to copy and paste a press release into that form field. And the probability of it being routed to and read by the appropriate editor seems pretty low since there has been no previous personal contact. So, that’s my dilemma of the day. Any thoughts or advice?
June 3rd, 2009 at 12:59 am
Natalie:
I enjoy your blog very much and forward your ideas– properly credited, of course– to clients fairly frequently. Thanks. Now, to your dilemma . . .
For what it’s worth, I don’t think you should consider a Facebook connection inappropriate. In the larger scheme of things, most professional people have profiles on Facebook because they do want to be contacted that way.
If you would feel more comfortable, however, in a more professional network, check some of the profiles that come up on LinkedIn after searching “USA Today” — I *know* you checked for Mr. Toppo and found he has no profile, but the paper does have some other contacts with profiles that might lead somewhere.
Good luck!
June 4th, 2009 at 10:29 pm
Well, Stephen, I hope you’re right, because after reading your comment I took the plunge and made the contact via facebook. We’ll see if this story ends up with a happy ending or not! 🙂 I keep thinking that I need to get a LinkedIn profile, but I haven’t done it yet. One of these days…
Thanks so much for your comment!
July 2nd, 2009 at 6:54 pm
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