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● Introduction & Index ● What is PR ● Job Expectations ● Types of Media ● Building Relationships ● Media, Hams & FCC Rules ● The Basic News Release ● Interviews and Live ● Making your own show ● Easy P.R. ● Public Service Events ● Piggy-back to Events ● Pictures NOW! ● P.R. Research Aids ● Making Friends ● ARES® PIO ● Final Exam Information Next Page

Who Decides What the News is? Who decides what runs and on what basis? At a newspaper or magazine, the decisions are usually made by one or more editors; at a radio or TV station, the titles might also include producers or news directors. How does your story compare with others competing for the same space or time, in terms of importance or interest? How does your story fit into the overall “mix” or “balance” of articles that an editor or producer likes to achieve in each issue or program? Another fact of life: When two stories of equal importance or interest are competing for the same space or time, the one that has that special something to catch the editor’s interest generally wins. One more fact of life: An editor can’t print or broadcast what he or she doesn’t know about. Inside the News Let’s take a closer look at the different areas within a newspaper, magazine, or broadcast that may offer opportunities for publicizing amateur radio. We’ll start with the print media. This category actually includes quite a variety of slightly different printed media. You need to expand your thinking a bit to appreciate the array of options available. Newspapers, for example, consist of a number of sections and cover everything from local to international news. Newspapers contain sports articles, feature stories, advertisements, want ads, editorials, letters to the editor, advice columns, “how-to” articles, obituaries, comics, puzzles, and more. Many of them contain supplements and magazine sections and publish Sunday editions. The point is that newspapers are not monolithic wholes but consist of a great many parts, some of which present excellent opportunities for you to get your story in print in other than a straight “news” context, as discussed above.