A good relationship with the local media can be very
beneficial to your bass club.
By Robert DeWitt
A cynical politician once noted, derby hat cocked to one side
and stumpy cigar clinched between his teeth, that there’s no
such thing as bad publicity.
That’s arguable but it makes a point that bass
clubs could take to heart. Their members might be surprised that
their local media are not only willing but happy to publish club
tournament results, announce upcoming tournaments and events and
give good ink to fundraisers.
Why Do Clubs Want Publicity?
Some club officers might wonder if they want the attention. The
answer is almost always, “yes” unless members like the idea of
their clubs stagnating and dying.
“You have to promote your club in a worthwhile
way,” said Daniel Bojo, who, as secretary treasurer for the West
Side Bass Club in Tuscaloosa, Ala., provides press releases to
the local news media.
Recruitment is essential. A 30-member club that
averages losing two members every year is a mere shadow of
itself in less than a decade. A media presence increases
awareness. And good publicity makes for good relations with the
non-angling public.
Unless the media spreads the word that
tournament anglers practice catch-and-release, stress boating
safety, work on behalf of charitable causes and contribute to
the local economy, the public won’t likely know.
And, of course, media attention rewards members for individual
excellence and club or tournament sponsors with a reward for
their patronage.
Bojo provides the local newspaper with results and other tidbits
from the club’s monthly tournaments. The club winds up with a
three or four paragraph brief with the names of the top three
finishers. It’s nothing monumental but gives the club consistent
name recognition.
“People know who we are,” Bojo said.
Publicity is particularly helpful in making a
club fundraiser or charitable project succeed. West Side Bass
Club has an annual kid’s catfish derby.
It’s a tailor-made media event with happy kids, and Bojo makes
sure all of the local media outlets know about it in advance. He
usually winds up with newspaper and radio coverage and this year
a TV station also shot footage.
“With the kids Derby, we keep getting more and
more kids every year,” he said.
Gerald Capps, who runs a weekly night tournament
on Holt Lake in Alabama, discovered the value of media coverage.
Holt has a serious floating trash problem and Capps wanted a
public cleanup project patterned after similar efforts on the
Warrior and Coosa River systems.
Capps wound up the media point man and managed to get magazine,
newspaper, radio and television coverage.
“Without media coverage, nobody would know
what’s going on,” he said.
“It’s like selling a product. If you don’t
advertise a product you don’t sell it.”
But he never had to pay for “advertising”. Media
outlets recognized the cleanup project’s news value and gave him
news coverage.
“We had better coverage on this cleanup than
we’ve had on any cleanup,” Capps said. “We had over 150
volunteers and got out 12,000-15,000 pounds of litter.”
Understanding a Media Outlet
Capps and Bojo are working guys, not public relations
professionals. Yet in a very straightforward and simple manner,
they approached media outlets and got what they wanted.
To get coverage clubs have to understand the
media outlets they target. The smaller the media outlet the more
receptive it will be to club news. Small community newspapers
live and die by the number of local names that appear in print.
Bass club results and announcements are like gold nuggets to
most small papers.
Once the club establishes a relationship with a
small newspaper, it may welcome the opportunity to do
feature-length stories on bass clubs. Small, local radio
stations may entertain the idea of doing remotes from weigh-ins.
But even small media outlets rarely devote staff time to club
events. Whether the newspaper or radio station employees know
anything about fishing is purely a matter of chance. And they’re
not going to seek out club information without prompting.
Regional media outlets covering multiple
counties are less accessible because they have more competition
for space and airtime. It takes ingenuity to get their attention
for longer articles. Splashy fundraisers like the lake cleanup
or kids fishing derby are one way to get coverage.
Regional media, particularly newspapers, often have outdoor
columnists and set aside space specifically for outdoor
coverage. That often creates an opportunity to publish results
or announcements.
Larger regional or state outlets are a harder
sell. Unless a newspaper has an outdoor calendar of events or
has consciously devoted space to “participant sports” results,
placing announcements or results is difficult. Unless radio and
television stations have local outdoor shows, it’s hard to pitch
something to them with as little sex appeal as a local club
tournament.
But most major markets have “alternative media.”
These are usually small weekly newspapers that serve the same
market as a large daily. Alternative weekly newspapers thrive on
the information that large dailies don’t print and can be a
viable way for clubs in larger cities to access media coverage.
Help the media do its job
All media outlets need a club’s help to gather information. How
much help the club provides usually determines how much coverage
it gets. It’s best to approach media outlets as if it’s the
club’s responsibility to provide all of the information.
First, club members or officers should appoint
someone from the club to handle all media contact. It doesn’t
necessarily have to be the president who might, out of
necessity, be a butt-kicker. Ideally, the media representative
should be among the club’s most likeable people, persistent but
not irritatingly pesky. The media representative should also be
literate, articulate and organized.
The club media contact should be clear on what
the club wants from the news media and be able to convey that.
Once the club provides him with a consensus, the club media
contact should contact the appropriate reporter or editor and
make an appointment.
Approach the media member openly. Tell the
columnist or host the coverage the club would like to get. Then
listen when he says what kind of coverage the club will get. The
media contact must know:
What information the columnist or host needs.
The media outlets deadlines.
In what form the media outlet needs the information. Should it
be in electronic or printed form, disk or e-mail, bullet points
or complete sentences?
Will the media outlet accept photographs or videotape and in
what form should it be presented?
Some newspapers no longer accept “grip-and-grin” photos of
people accepting awards or checks. That’s usually a policy
decision made at a fairly high level and complaining about it
won’t get it changed. It will create unnecessary ill will.
Communicating with the Media
The cliché that “you catch more flies with honey than vinegar”
is never more applicable than in dealing with the news media.
For the same reason you don’t verbally abuse a traffic cop who
has just pulled you over, club members should not start their
relationship with the media on an adversarial note. Assume the
best; and give your local columnist or host the benefit of the
doubt.
People are different. Some require more cajoling
than others. But many are easier to deal with than club members
expect. Bojo points to Russ Meyer, an executive for WTXT radio
in Tuscaloosa, Ala.
“You just email him and it starts,” Bojo
chuckles. “All you have to do is email him tell him what you
want and he does it.”
Two weeks before the catfish derby, the popular
country music station starts running promos for the event. The
station does a remote from the derby.
“If you just call people, talk to them and let
them know what you need, almost everybody is willing to help,”
Bojo said.
Capps simply called on media outlets, introduced
himself and told them what he needed.
“It was great,” Capps said. “Everybody treated
me just great, television, newspaper and radio, everybody.”
He also made sure media outlets knew he was
legitimate by making them aware of well-known sponsors like the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Alabama Power Co. And he made
them aware of organizational meetings and planned a “media
event” just to get coverage.
Also, there’s nothing like making a courtesy
call on a local media outlet when the club wants absolutely
nothing. Just let the columnist know the club is out there, hand
over a calendar of events and ask in an upbeat way if there’s
anything you can do to help. When you call wanting something,
you can reference the visit.
If your local columnist fishes, invite him to go
with you and try to take him when the fish are biting. Even
media types like to catch fish.
Robert DeWitt is outdoors writer for The
Tuscaloosa News in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
