Ask Charity Weblog

the askCHARITY team has recently made a big effort to get ITN aware of the site and their ability to send out requests. An ITN producer sent out a request yesterday just before 5 - they wanted help recruiting young people to comment on some anti-drugs adverts. It was a gift of a request but the deadline was incredibly tight - they wanted charities to get back to them by 7.00pm. I was worried no one would get back to them...so I started ringing round contacts on the site. It was only just after five but many of the landline phones weren't answered. In the end I spoke to four people, of whom one was able to help ITN. The experience made me understand why some news organisations go back to the same contacts again and again....

Posted by Charity at 01:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

It's not too hard these days to get newspapers to publish a correction if they have published incorrect information but often the damage has been done, and those who read the original article miss the correction. But I take my hat off to the East Anglian Air Ambulance. They were upset by a story in the Norwich Evening News saying the charity had awarded big bonuses its staff. The story was wrong and the charity persuaded the paper to draft a letter to its donors to that effect : link. We have also come across a new internet service which offers to help organisations in a similar position.. This launches in May http://www.newscounter.com/aboutus.jsp. It is a " new right to reply service for communication professionals whose company or organisation has been misrepresented by the media". It's interesting, though it needs people to know about it via a major publicity campaign for it to work....

Posted by Charity at 10:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From journalists and expert commercial PRs here are some quotes on press release blunders:
- "Not putting a date on the press release:
- Putting someone as a contact who goes on holiday for a week on the day the press release comes out (it happens more often than you would think).
- Sending it as an attachment with no info on the email and the subject line "Press release" - won't get read.
- 5MB photo attachements you never requested
- No email signature for the sending PR. I've had to rummage through one agency's web site to find a phone number before. Last time I did that was last week.
- Cliches - World's leading, innovative, very unique (eek!) et cetera. Nothing will get a press release filed in the round folder as quickly".
- Did you get my press release? Yes, we did.
- Embedded images, press releases in word docs or pdf files. Journoshave been known to check their email using mobile phones. Alternatively, they might be on a low bandwidth connection or still using Lotus Notes (Yup, really). Also, we want to see what the press release is about without waiting for Word or Adobe Reader to boot. If the press release isn't something we know we will be interested in, it goes in the round file.

Posted by Charity at 10:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)