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Hams across the country are aiding hurricane kids this holiday season. The American Radio Relay League, the national association for Amateur Radio, is coming to the aid of children in the coastal areas of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana this season by conducting a nation-wide toy drive. With over 150,000 ARRL members and 670,000 hams in the country overall, it could make quite a difference. Toys are already arriving at the Memphis, TN collection center.
Over the past weeks, we have all heard of the devastation left by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Many ham radio operators actually heard it first hand through volunteer service or on their radios. Thousands of families are without a place to live and will be homeless over the coming Holiday Season. For a child living out of a tent, or car, FEMA trailer or someone else's home, the 2005 holiday season will be anything but jolly. But hams from all across the country are coming to their rescue again through the American Radio Relay League's program.
Between now and December 10, ham radio operators throughout the United States are collecting new toys for children and sending them with a card showing their radio callsign to:
Award Winning Singer -- and a Ham too! -- Patty Loveless has made a 30 second video Public Service Announcement for the drive. You can download either a small (computer size) copy yourself for meetings and clubs, or you can download a full, broadcast quality .MOV file for television stations in your area.
Go to:
For 9 meg .wmv file http://www.arrl.org/video/toydrive_master_web.wmv
For 3 meg MP4 file http://www.arrl.org/video/Toy_Drive_Master_web.mp4
For 480 meg .MOV file for TV broadcasting\ http://www.arrl.org/video/Toy_Drive_Master_DV.mov
OR
you can also go to www.hello-radio.org
"As The Salvation Army continues to provide assistance to the victims of the largest natural disaster in modern US history, we are excited to partner with the ARRL in providing toys for children affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita this holiday season," said Mark Jones, Salvation Army PR Director. The Salvation Army will be handling the distribution end of the program.
The Jackson, MS Salvation Army facility will be coordinating distribution throughout the Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana coastal areas because it still has the facilities to manage a large toy drive. The toys will be collected at the ARRL warehouse in Memphis, TN and brought to the Salvation Army for distribution to the coastal locations whose own facilities are no longer capable of managing such a project.
"Last year, hams from all over the country brought smiles to children during the holidays. We made a lot of friends, and we did a lot of good. No one expected that we would need to do it again, but Katrina's destruction has changed the plans of a lot of people. I hope you will help in this effort to bring a smile to children hurt by this disaster." --ARRL Pres. Jim Haynie.
Unwrapped toys for boys and girls of ages 1 to 14 are being gathered and shipped by amateur radio operators to the Memphis, TN facility between now and early December for distribution over the holidays. Non-hams are also encouraged to join in this effort to provide for the thousands of children suddenly homeless due to the series of hurricanes. Those members wishing to donate money instead of toys can send a check to:
ARRL
-Toy Drive
225 Main Street
Newington, CT 06111
What about "Gift Cards"?
WalMart Gift Cards can be helpful. Other stores are not as widely located in the region and their cards may not be useful in this activity.
The ARRL is asking all hams to make the coming Holiday Season a little bit brighter for a child by participating in this toy drive. Purchase a new toy and send it to the ARRL Toy Drive/Salvation Army address. Maybe it's not a new home to live in, but knowing that someone "out there" remembers you is a start for these children.
"Hams are an incredible group of people who do more service for their communities and neighbors than anyone, including the hams themselves, imagine." --A.Pitts
...and that is the problem. When we talk to politicians, FCC representatives, homeowner associations or emergency planners, we know stories of our capabilities and history, but we cannot document it. To make an impression on modern leaders, we need numbers! How many, hours involved, costs, who, what, where, when -- all these quantitative statistics are needed. Without them, it is as if it never happened at all.
If you were an editor, which lead would get your attention?
The same works for getting grants and influencing legislation. But to get the hard data, we need to do something new and different. In the past, we did our good work and just went home knowing we had helped. Now we really do need to document it.
"The job's not done until the paperwork is finished."
We need every ham to begin filling out the database of service on http://www.arrl.org/FandES/field/agencies/vol-report.html so that Amateur Radio can have the documentation to back up our claims. This is where you as a PIO come in!
When your group has an incident or responds to need, not only do you have a news opportunity, but we hope you will get those involved to fill in the form. Let's make sure that Amateur Radio gets credit for what we do!
A simple question came up recently which may be of interest to many of you.
"What kinds of Press Releases does the ARRL do?"
There are two basic types of releases we do.
The second type is when we do a wire release. We only do 2-3 of these a year as they are expensive. Usually these relate to some legal issues. For a national release it's about $600 for just two good paragraphs (400 words total including contact and other information) and costs go up very fast.
Your local paper would only get the wire releases unless someone local to them is passing on the others. Most papers still do not want email releases. They prefer fax. Of course, the BEST way to place a release is with a face-to-face meeting!
Does it work? In the
Rita/Katrina period alone we hadover 1000newspaper articles about
the hams on Google's news search at the height of the event, including praise articles in Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, NY Times, MSNBC TV, umpteen local radio
stations, even the BBC, Voice of America and The Home Shopping Channel. There
is also a whole documentary in progress for TV coming, a special Katrina
related audio PSA that has played on a dozens of radio stations around the
country, many press releases and we even testified before the US Congressional hearings about our work.
Also, take a look at the Oct 8 editorial in PC Magazine or the recent
Electronic Design Magazine. Even the computermagazine people think
we were fantastic!
If you've seen a particularly good article on ham radio in print, on television, or heard one on the radio, you might want to nominate the reporter for the 2005 Bill Leonard, W2SKE, Professional Media Award. The deadline for nominations is December 3, 2005. Nominated work must have appeared between December 3, 2004 and December 3, 2005.
Full details and application forms can be sent email. Just ask by sending an email to apitts@arrl.org or see Page 59 of the November QST .
John McIntyre of the Baltimore Sun advised, "If you are pitching a new brand of cat food and you have to get a journalist to read it, you do not want to talk initially about the nutritional details or about the new component -- you want to tell the reader what this means to somebody who owns a cat."
Good Advice about handling bad times...
Jennifer Windrum writes, "If you wait to tell (the media) the truth, even the truth won't be good enough."
Good Advice about hiding beer and wine...
"Never, ever...ever have alcoholic beverages in sight during an interview or TV shot unless you are a winery. You can guarantee that more attention will be spent on the alcohol than your talking point." - Field Day reporter's comment
Not by Flaming!
Often we may see a newspaper article that is misleading, incorrect or just out-and-out biased. Our first thought is often to write a scathing response ... and that's the wrong way to go. Reporters are, unfortunately, not usually experts about the topics assigned to them. Most do the best they can, but they often have little background to work with and can be drawn into positions that are controversial if they do not hear that opposing views even exist.
Such was the case recently in a
BPL article for a Michigan paper. But, in this case, there was a happy
ending.
Remember -- the FIRST goal of good PR is to win friends! You
don't do that by blasting the editors! You do it by pointing out the errors,
providing correct information, and offering to be of aid in the future.
That is what Dale Williams, WA8EFK, did.
Let's look at the series of emails he sent and the results he got as an example:
From: Dale Williams
Subject: Editorial
Hi, Ed.
One of our local papers, The Monroe Evening News, today reprinted an
article form The New York Times proclaiming the merits of BPL. A copy is
attached.
Did anyone from HQ respond to the Times' article? If so, I would like a
similar (or identical) response sent to The Monroe Evening News. The
Times' commentary seems to ignore all of the negative aspects of BPL,
financial, technical and the like, all in support of a failed design.
I look forward to hearing for you,
Thanks,
Dale Williams WA8EFK
Section Manager - Michigan
His first action was to provide information (copies of the article) and see if there was something like this already available.
----------------------------------------
From: Hare, Ed W1RFI
Subject: RE: Editorial
Hi, Dale,
I will ask Allen Pitts to send you a copy of the letters he sent to the Times.
Michigan may be a bit unique, though, in that the Shpigler Group is putting a Motorola system into Michigan. Our analyses show that there should not be harmful interference to amateur radio, although we are most interested in seeing the first systems installed in the field. It will also be interesting to note what happens to other spectrum. So the message really needs to be that BPL that uses Amateur or shortwave-broadcast spectrum will cause local, strong interference, not that BPL is bad in and of itself.
Ed
Ed Hare provided him with important information. Remember, our issue is interference, and not all BPL systems cause problems. In this case, there was a system going in (Motorola) which should NOT be a problem and we needed to define the target as systems causing interference by using our frequencies. Ed Hare also alerted the PR Manager to the request.
-----------------------------------------------
Pitts, Allen W1AGP wrote:
Ed is correct that "all news is local" and that a local response to the paper increases the liklihood of it getting printed. But I am more than happy to attach the draft of the information sent to the Times.
Please note the yellow highlighted section at the very end. You definitely would want to change this part for yourself.
Allen
While a national association has political "clout", in this case the best possibility of getting a response in ink for a local paper was through a local resident. Rather than a far-off media person write an editorial, it was most effective to provide Dale with the information he needed and allow him to edit it into his own situation. Dale did just that and sent it in.
From: Dale Williams
Subject: Re: Editorial
Well, guys we hit a nerve.
The Monroe Evening News just called and I am meeting them Wednesday morning to
have my picture taken to go along with "my" letter on BPL. I'll
forward a copy when it hits the news stand.
Dale
By NOT flaming or ranting, Dale made an ally out of the editor who now not only wants to hear more, but will be highly skeptical of blue-sky BPL claims in the future.
---------------------------------------
Pitts, Allen W1AGP wrote:
GREAT!
Please DO send a copy of the article as I would like to turn it into a "how to" piece for PIO's in general.
This is the way to do it right! :-)
Allen
--------------------------------------
Hi, Allen.
Here is the article [reprinted with permission]. It ran Friday. (Sorry they blew the headline).
Thanks for all the help.