The Publicity Coordinator is responsible for external publicity related to church events. Please contact publicity at wuu dot org to request publicity.
Publicity Guidelines for WUUs:
To help WUU attain a higher profile in the community and to facilitate outreach, we have developed a system for supplying local papers with regular coverage of our activities. Our aim is to submit around two news releases per month. To enhance consistency, all news coverage emanating from WUU should first go through the Leadership Team before going to the WUU Publicity Coordinator (with the exception of WALT and “Live Off Five” events, which have traditionally handled their own publicity). See the “Leadership Team and Committee Chairs” page for the name of our Publicity Coordinator (coordinator), and the Communications Committee Chair (CC chair).
At monthly Leadership Team meetings, the CC chair will flag upcoming events that merit press coverage, and ask the organizer or committee chair responsible for the event to prepare a release or provide basic information to the publicity coordinator, preferably via email (publicity-at-wuu.org). Examples might include a special Sunday sermon or music program, a lecture, meeting or film event, or notice of a social justice activity. The coordinator will be happy to advise committee chairs about what information to include in these news releases, and will assist in their preparation if need be.
The publicity coordinator will edit and transmit the release and/or pictures to the Virginia Gazette, the Daily Press and WYDaily.com, the local online newspaper. If you have questions about whether an item is newsworthy, or are stuck writing it up, please email or call the coordinator.
Events to which the public is invited need to go to the papers well in advance (see deadlines below) so that they can be listed on the community calendars. Photos or brief articles about an activity or event that has already occurred should be sent in as soon as possible after the event. Releases should include: Type of event, leader or speaker’s name and affiliation, date, time, place, and a contact number to call for more info. Also include the church’s address. When submitting photos, aim for action if possible, rather than a dull lineup of people facing the camera. All photos should be clearly identified as to “what, when, who and where” the picture illustrates.
The coordinator has contacted the publications about their requirements for submitting news releases. Even though he/she will be the point-person submitting to the papers, committee chairs should review the deadlines and guidelines to assure that our news makes the paper. The guidelines are as follows:
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Virginia Gazette
Williamsburg VA 23188
757 345-2344
The deadline for the Long-Range and Ongoing calendars is noon on Thursdays. These two calendars print only online now, at .
The To Do List calendar, which lists daily events either Wednesday-Sunday or
Saturday-Tuesday, prints in each edition of the paper. The deadline is at noon on Monday (for Wednesday’s edition) and noon Thursday (for Saturday’s edition).
Pictures should be submitted by email in jpeg or tiff format and no larger than 2MB.
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Daily Press
Calendar items should arrive at the DP no less than one week before you want the item to run. Deadline is Friday at 5 p.m. for listing on the following Friday.
Calendar announcements should run no more than two or three sentences. Look at the paper for guidelines as to format.
Send pictures by email in jpeg format, in the largest file size you can. Include no more than a paragraph caption for the photo.
News releases (as opposed to calendar items) should be no more than three or four paragraphs.
The shorter the release, the more likely it will be published. Space considerations more than anything else determine what the paper prints.
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WYDaily.com
WYDaily does not have a set format or deadline for upcoming events. Since event hosts list their own events on the Talk of the Town calendar, it can be done at any time. They do have an approval process for events, so submitting an event and hoping that it would appear immediately is not realistic, but they try to guarantee that all events are posted within 24 hours of submission (except weekends, of course).
They welcome accompanying photos for event listings – and when one is submitting an event, the e-mail address where a photo can be sent (separately) is listed on the events submission page. Anyone can get to that page by visiting the homepage of www.wydaily.com – and on the right side of the page, toward the bottom, there is a blue “submit event” button which will link directly to the page where as much information about the event as one would like to put in can be entered.
If you’re speaking about submitting occasional photos simply to be shown on the paper, there is a “button” for that, too – and you’ll be able to find that on the homepage of WYDaily, also.
E.G. – 1/18/10, FG – 3/8/11