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IN THIS EDITION:
There have been a number of requests that text from CONTACT! be sent out on the PR email reflector. This is not hard to do, but it may lose some of the formatting and hyperlinks. With over 430 recipients on the reflector, we ask for your feelings. Is doing this additionally as an email helpful to you or not. CONTACT! will continue to be posted as usual on the web at http://www.arrl.org/pio/contact/#current
Recently there was an article about Amateur Radio in the Melbourne, Florida papers. But what do the Floridians see on page 2A of the Sunday paper but a generic AP or Gannet photo and caption for FD in Duluth MN. Now nothing is wrong with the hams in Duluth, but what about the local Florida folks?
PR Committee Chairwoman Sherri Brower, W4STB, suggested a letter to the editor pointing out the Duluth photo and saying, "Your readers may want to know that local groups were active for this exercise... ‘blah blah blah’ and mentioning their local EmComm and Skywarn service throughout the year.” But the article was already out there with the generic picture.
Obviously, it is easier for many budget-strapped papers to run with a pre-packaged “happy meal” than to do own reporting work. Therefore, you have some work to do yourself as a PIO.
Most media are very gun-shy about attachments to emails – and rightfully so. But you will usually do better to give them complete, pre-packaged pieces with photos. There are three ways to do this. (a) have an established relationship with reporters in which they will accept your email with attachments or (b) you will need to go to them in person with the photos and story on paper and/or a disk. (c) is to call them, pitch the story and get their permission to send it email, with attachments.
While you may get results with just a written press release and the best journalists want to do their own writing, you just may do much better with a full, pre-packaged “happy-meal” story even if they edit and change it.
So your club is having a hamfest and you want to get good PR for it. You want lots of people to come and maybe even get a few new hams in the process. As a PIO, you also want to generate good community relations. Here’s an idea that works:
Local volunteer fire departments have a major problem. They are having a very hard time getting volunteers. This seems to be primarily because of the intense training that their volunteers must have (which sounds familiar to the concerns of some ARES people). So, they have recruiting drives.
Go to your local department’s Chief and invite them to have a table/booth at your hamfest! Give it to them for free. If they do not come, at least you have made a positive contact. But if they do come, you are performing a public service, making important friendships which will help in a crisis, showing the Amateur Radio’s options to the wider community, and just may get the firemen interested in our capabilities. It’s a win-win that only costs you a little time but can have major outcomes for all. Besides, all the firemen will come to see what’s up and bring their families!
Hams are communicators, and not just on the airwaves. Some days it seems hams must have more blogs and newsletters per person than most any other activity. How can you keep up on them? We found an interesting website!
Find out what folks are saying online using Omgili, a relatively new site that searches online discussions very effectively. (Just be warned that if you type in Amateur Radio you will get over 9700 hits on forums and blogs, so use definitive search words.)
Closely related to this are people who use open internet forums as their own blogs. There are many of these about on every imaginable topic, and Amateur Radio has several. In general there are three types of contributors, separated by motivations.
The first is the supporter who is easily recognized by their positive comments and encouragement for some action or news event. As a PR person, we always like these postings.
The second can be trickier. This is the negative comment which is done with the desire to make things better. These comments can range from mild to downright hurtful, but the motivation is not to destroy anything, but actually to be a help and improve upon it. Engaging these people in open and dialogue often quickly turns them into helpers and even friends. Their motivation is the same as ours – to promote and make Amateur Radio the best it can be. If they start out with an antagonistic tone, it is often only because they do not feel they have been heard before. Dialog can be productive here.
The third motivation is simply to destroy. These are the nasty comments, innuendos and rants which have no purpose other than to tear something down. Engaging these postings is fruitless – it only leads to more bad behaviors. There is an unattributable quote that goes, “Never wrestle with a pig in the mud. You only get dirty and the pig likes it.” Similar to someone causing intentional interference on the air, the more you comment, the worse it gets. The best thing to do is simply ignore them.
Just in case you missed it, there’s a New Icom video at
Icom Radio News, Volume 5- NEW!
We keep looking for some of the best websites about PR available. Another really good website for PIOs which is full of ideas. Take a look!
http://www.karenfriedman.com/articles.php
Looking for how to say something, abbreviate or spell it? Want to impress an editor by being “media literate” in your releases? Then book mark the AP Stylebook website and keep it as a reference.
http://www.apstylebook.com/ask_editor.php
Recently I received the following email (edited and reprinted here with permission):
-----Original Message-----
From: Mark D. Conklin N7XYO [mailto:n7xyo@arrl.net]
Hi Allen, One of the challanges we have run into here is when a major disaster happens, and State Emergency Managment sets up a JIC (Joint Infomration Center) at a disaster "to control the flow of accurate infomation" the ARES story does NOT get mentioned. And by the time the media is looking for other stories other than the main disaster, they the JIC tends to direct the media to Red Cross, Salvation Army, Baptist Mens Disaster Service, Corp of Eng, etc, you know the $$ biggies. Heck, 2 stations even did long stories about the flooded out pets.
So what suggestions do you have about getting around this or working with the JIC at a disaster?
73 Mark Conklin N7XYO
A-SEC ARES OK
This is a problem which has been going on for years in many places. We lose far too many good stories and opportunities simply because we do not have a PIO in the right place at the right time.
For 2007 the PR Committee and I have been preaching on the need for sections to have one or more ARES-specific PIOs who can ride to the sound of the guns. They should not be tied to any particular club or group, just to ARES, and able to go to wherever ARES is deployed and move into the JIC with other organizations’ PIOs. We will get nothing by being absent or standing outside when the action is going on inside.
But this means finding people and then getting the credentials needed for that area. It also cannot be the SEC, DEC or EC as those people should be doing operations, not diverted by PR work.
There’s more about this on the 2007 Swiss Army Knife for PIOs in Section 11.
You as PIO in a crisis If you do not have the disk, you can also see it at http://www.wa4zxv.com/
There’s even more in a whole section on this topic, with a PowerPoint, in a separate subdirectory on the new Talk on a Disk for EmComm presentations.
But just looking at websites or reading those papers will not DO anything. We need PR savvy people to start writing and encouraging their Section Managers to appoint one or more PIOs just for this purpose – who will quickly respond to a crisis and go to the JIC so that Amateur Radio is there too, not just the “Red Cross, Salvation Army, Baptist Mens Disaster Service, Corp of Eng, etc, you know the $$ biggies.”
Amateur Radio Awareness Day coming in September
While August is quiet, there are four events coming up in September and October that PIOs should start planning for.
August
4-5 ARRL UHF Contest
4-5 North American QSO Party--CW
18-19 ARRL 10 GHz and Up Cumulative Contest
18-19 North American QSO Party--Phone
September
1 National Preparedness Month Begins
8-9 ARRL September VHF QSO Party
9 North American CW Sprint
15 Amateur Radio Public Awareness Day
15-16 ARRL 10 GHz and Up Cumulative Contest
16 North American Phone Sprint
22-23 CQ WW RTTY Contest
29-30 ARRL VEC Amateur Exam Day
October
6-7 ARRL Simulated Emergency Test
14 North American RTTY Sprint
15 to 19 School Club Roundup
19 First Quarter
20-21 Scouts Jamboree On the Air 50th Anniv
27-28 CQ WW DX SSB Contest
From under his slouching fedora, Cagney whispers in the darkness to his minion in crime, “OK youse guys….here’s da plan.”
In 2006 the ARRL held the “Hello” campaign promoting the fun, friendships and Dx side of Amateur Radio. –It worked.
In 2007 the ARRL is holding the EmComm campaign promoting the use of ham radio in emergencies. –It’s working.
For 2008 we hope to develop promotions on the technical side of Amateur Radio. But we need help to make it work.
Bluntly, the general public will not be interested if we start talking about megahertz and hairpin matching coax. Their eyes will glaze over if we include even one equation or circuit diagram. We need to do it in a different way. This is one place where we must depart entirely from normal ham-speak.
What we need are human interest stories. Here’s some sample ideas:
a) A ham responds to a crisis by taking an existing technology and using it in a totally different and novel way which results in important communication.
b) Something that a ham learned as they worked on their radios gets used to solve a major project or engineering problem later in life (even if that problem was not directly radio related).
c) An idea that developed because of ham radio activity is taken and becomes a whole business, activity or even a new technology unto itself. (SuitSat would fit in this part.)
d) Major careers that began due to involvement in Amateur Radio
We all know these things have happened. What we need for the 2008 campaign are the names, quotes and personal details. We need to put pictures and human faces on them, tell the “Lassie and Timmy” stories behind them and make them personal.
How YOU can help:
Got a story to tell? Know someone who does? Send it along with the names and contact information for the people involved to us at hello@arrl.org . The more unusual and ingenious, the better!
Two things are coming in August which will cause changes in many other areas.
Dennis Dura, K2DCD, begins as the new EmComm Manager here at ARRL HQ. While he has extensive background, it still will be a steep learning curve. But once he’s settled in, many good things are expected and as ARES becomes more organized on a larger scale, we too need to get organized to cover ARES deployments. Last year we were lucky – no hurricane. But how long is that luck going to hold out? We know that in a major disaster where we are truly needed, it will be bad enough that help will have to come in from the outside of the affected area. The hams inside the zone will be victims. What about us as PIOs?
The second is the coming Global Amateur Radio Emergency Conference and ARRL Convention at the Huntsville, Alabama Hamfest. (Aug 15-19) These twin events provide us a much larger perspective on Amateur Radio’s media relations. It is not just your local club or group. It is not even your section. What happens out there in the wide world sets the palette from which you can only add local colors. I hope as many of you as possible make the events as they will be learning experiences for all of us.
Finally, a THANK YOU!
As the flood of media hits starts to calm down after Field Day, it remains very apparent what a good day it was for Amateur Radio PR. But even now, in the midst of the “summer doldrums” I am getting the best kind of problems sent to me. People want the EmComm brochure, or maybe they are not sure how to get Talk on a Disk. Some want display kits and others change their emails on the PR reflector. These dozens of small problems can fill a day quickly, but they are also clearly indicating that there are PIOs out there who “get it.” Field Day is not enough. They are still going… and they are getting results.