It's often not that hard to get media coverage of your club if you take the right steps and are persistent and professional. The media is not obligated to cover you (and when the story prints, you may regret they did), but if you package your story well, and are doing something newsworthy, you have a pretty good shot of getting at least a blurb. And if you produce a story one time, that media outlet is much more likely to give you real consideration the next time. And so on.

It's true what they say - the media is biased. It's biased toward "good stories" that are easy to write. Give them one, and they just might even print it as is. (After all, it doesn't get any easier to write than that!)

To help campus LP clubs get their fair share of the media pie, we'd like to post one new press release a week during the school year, for campus Libertarian clubs to adapt and release in their own area. Not every release will be the right fit for every club, but over the course of the year we should come up with a pretty good pool of samples, at the very least.

I don't mind writing the releases if need be, but I'm not at your campuses. So to make this really effective, I'll need your help. As I see it there are a few ways the various releases could come about:

1. Your club may have a press release in mind already, but don't want to or can't write it for whatever reason. I could write up a press release for you based on the background information you provide (and then others could modify and use it if they so chose).
2. Same as above, except maybe you wrote your own press release, and you're willing to offer it up for others to modify and use if they deem it appropriate.
3. There are lots of issues that span the whole college universe, affecting nearly all student bodies. If we decide what some of those top issues are, a few of the press releases could be on those issues (but not written for any particular school).
4. Similar to the above,some of the press releases could be on general political issues that affect everybody (even beyond campuses). Things like war, the presidential election, etc. Or the issue-of-the-day that is making headlines during a given week.
5. Maybe there are other volunteers who would like to offer their press-release-writing services? Maybe we could have a place for exactly that? A press release writer's pool for PR-starved clubs?

For any of those options to work, we'll need to get some feedback and involvement from the folks with the boots on the ground. That's you, if my surveillance data is accurate. So...

---If you need a press release written for something coming up this semester, let me know, and we'll get that cranked out lickety split.

--If you write a press release this semester, pass it in, and we'll post it for the whole class to see. (I'll even see if I can dig up my gold star stickers.) Even better, if you know you're going to have one ready on a certain issue or type of event, let me know, so as to avoid duplicative work.

--If you have suggestions for hot issues that affect most or many campuses/students, please post them in the comments. If we get some good ideas, we can start a forum and sort through the best info to use to present them from a campus libertarian perspective. Same goes for issues that go beyond the campus realm...but those are easier to come by. It's the student-specific issues that you can help out the most with. Presumably there are some issues on campus that get you fired up, no?

--If you'd like to join or start a volunteer pool of press release (and/or other stuff?) writers, chime in and let me know, and we'll set up a place for it.

Feel free to post comments here or send me a private message if any of the above apply to you.

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