[ubuntu-uk] [uk-marketing] Writing for your local rag

[Mark Harrison]

Chris Rowson wrote:
> Just checked the info, and this parish encompasses 17,200 people!
> (2001 census) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottingham%2C_East_Riding_of_Yorkshire
> Not bad eh!
>
> Although I don't know about the magazine circulation, I think that
> concentrating on smaller areas individually (but with one and others
> support) gives us greater chance of success ;-)
>
> Chris
I've had a few articles published in "special interest" magazines (no, 
not that sort!) - not Linux-related but related to my own area of 
investment specialism - and I currently have an agency running a 
national PR campaign for me in the "day job", so have a bit of 
experience in getting ideas into traditional media.

What I've found is that magazines tend to like articles that:

- Are bang on target for their content area
- Are well-written, in the sense of readability (relatively short 
sentence construction, no plosives next to fricassives, and so on)
- Are free (in the sense of pizza)
- Don't come over as if they were written by a religious nutcase (place 
the following in order of importance, 1: ending world poverty, 2: curing 
cancer, 3: ensuring programmers have a legal right to modify sourcecode, 
then work out what the order of importance is for the magazine readership!)


- Many of them also seem to like articles that appear to interview other 
sources (There is one particular freelance journalist who phones me up 
for a soundbite every few months when he's pitching for a particular 
magazine.) If you are an IT consultant, don't hesitate to get 
sound-bites from your clients about their use of Ubuntu - the angle of 
"local firm XXX switched and...."

- More and more local magazines have realised that they can't compete as 
an aggregator of generic news, so are pushing the "local angle" more and 
more... so by all means write for the East Riding of Yorkshire, if you 
live there, or can interview a local firm / celebrity, and make the 
article about THEM.



Regards,

Mark