How to: Notify the media - Russia's War on Faith

Do your local media a big favor, and let them know that your event is happening!

How to send a notice to the media

Make a list of the major TV channels, newspapers, radio stations, and any other major media outlets in your area.
- For each outlet, look for the “Contact” page on their website. There should be instructions on how to contact the newsroom / news desk: both email and phone. Write these down for each outlet.
- If there’s only a general phone number – write that down instead.
- FYI: Not all outlets will have emails or phone numbers. Some may have contact forms.

Prepare and send the emails.
- Add all the media contact emails you collected into the BCC field in the email. (IMPORTANT: Use BCC, not “To” or “CC”.)
- Optional: If you want to be more sophisticated, you can use mail merge or a CRM email service to send out this email in a more personalized fashion.
- Strongly recommend NOT TO ATTACH ANY FILES to this email! News companies have very paranoid anti-virus and anti-spam filters. Text should be in the email body, not attached!

Optional step: call the media outlet phone numbers that you have, and confirm with the newsroom that they have received the email.
1. (“Hi, my name is ___ from ___. I’m calling to confirm that you received our media advisory? Subject line is ___”)
2. If you sent at night and not during office hours – you can call the next morning instead to confirm.

Subject: Ukraine rally, [DAY OF WEEK] [DATE], [TIME], [CITY]

Hello,

My name is ____ and I am a community organizer at ____.

I am writing to let you know that we are holding a rally on [DATE], as part of a nation-wide campaign to raise awareness about .

We hope to see you there.

[We are available to be interviewed – write in a way that would be appealing to radio]

Thank you,

[YOUR NAME]

[Your email address]

[Your phone number]

Coming soon.