There is nothing esoteric about the practice of successful press relations. Anyone with a fair mastery of the English language can prepare news stories that will meet at least the minimum requirements of the copy desk and editors are among the most approachable of human beings. There is. nonetheless, a certain amount of "know how" involved, and certain procedures are routine in newspaper offices.
Because of the fact that these procedures are not too difficult to learn, they are sometimes taken for granted when an experienced reporter explains his work to a novice. When he has described the thrills of seeing one's copy in print : spoken glibly of deadlines, news style, and the local angle; and concluded with the assurance that it is all really quite simple, the beginner counters, "But how do I begin?"
Here is at least a partial answer by a reporter who has not covered Adventist news so long but that some of the original hurdles are still vividly remembered. My biggest hurdle, in anticipation, was the personal contact with editors, because, more or less unconsciously, I shared the prevalent misapprehension that editors as a class are prejudiced against Seventh-day Adventists. But I discovered that nothing could be more untrue. Repeatedly, as I have approached editors with reports of camp meetings, conventions, and ordinary everyday church news, I have found them warmly appreciative of religious news stories if written in a form which makes them easy to use.
The secret of successful press relations lies not in impressing the editor, I discovered, but in preparing a story that meets newspaper standards. Those standards are not absolute, of course, because they are determined by the individual judgment of editors, who are perfectly human in having personal preferences and sometimes misconceptions. But journalists as a professional group pride themselves on being fair and open-minded. and I have found editors more interested than ,I would have believed possible in learning about the Seventh-day Adventist Church and in printing a generous share of news about our activities.
Only once in two years of personal contact with reporters and editors on many papers, including the largest city dailies, have I encountered an exception, and it is quite likely that even that one apparently unco-operative reporter could have been educated, if there had been opportunity for repeated contacts, to see that Adventists are carrying, on activities that are of interest to the reading public. .
It would be misleading to give the impression that every editor is waiting eagerly for Adventist news with which to fill his columns. But every editor is interested in giving his readers what they want, and if he fails to show enthusiasm for stories about Seventh-day Adventists which come to his desk, one of three very definite reasons is almost certain to be responsible, and not the vague bugaboo of prejudice.
Why News Stories rail to Appear
First of all, a story may fail to meet the editor's standard of what is news. Textbooks on journalism generally define it somewhat as follows: "News is an account of a recent event which interests readers." Editors vary in the application of that standard, but one thing is certain, whether you are o- for the New
.A
York Times or the Lone Oak writing you must think about what the readers will be interested in, not about what you want them to know. You will learn, of course, as a skilled public relations man or woman, to accomplish both of these objectives in the story, because there would be no point in expending your effort merely to entertain, if you do not also get across certain facts you want the reader to know.
Very often in reporting church news, this matter of keeping the readers' interest in mind is only a question of changing the emphasis of a story or the style in which it is written. A sermon written out just as it was delivered in the pulpit will seldom draw reader interest, even if you are willing to pay advertising space rates to see it in print. But the key thought of that same sermon, highlighted and stated in language understandable to the ordinary reader, will rate good space even on church pages of city papers.
A good way to approach every event you report is to ask yourself, "What is there about this that will interest housewives and workingmen and schoolteachers and all the rest of the people in this community ?" Editors have learned by experience what their readers like, and give it to them as a matter of good business policy.
That kind of approach paid off in the keenest satisfaction I have had thus far in reporting Adventist news, when Chicago newspapers carried full accounts of a child evangelism institute held in near-by Hinsdale. A meeting attended by two hundred people in a little suburb fifteen miles from downtown Chicago would not be expected to receive much attention in papers crowded with the news of a huge city. However, people in Chicago, like everywhere else, were concerned about the problem of increasing juvenile delinquency. And the fact that Seventh-day Adventists were doing something constructive about the problem by holding institutes to teach parents and teachers how to develop desirable attitudes and habits in children, was news of sufficient importance to receive a half column in the Sunday Tribune, which has a circulation of 1,473,491, and generous space in other papers.
This is just one example of the kind of alertness religious news reporters must develop. The study of a good journalism textbook, such as McDougall's Interpretative Reporting, published by Macmillan, will help to develop news sense, because the principles of what makes news are the same for church news as for any other kind. Some of these principles are outlined briefly in the little manual How to Use the Press, prepared for ministers and press secretaries by the General Conference Press Relations Bureau.
One of the best ways to acquire this knack for seeing the news values in church activities is just to begin writing for the local papers, and watch carefully which stories are used and which are not. If your story is rewritten, notice which facts are given most prominence. Sermon reports that feature events and conditions written up in the front-page news columns are given good space. Stories about people who are known in the community and what they are doing are welcomed by editors. Reports of humanitarian enterprises have a general appeal. Gradually you will learn how to report the information you want to see in the papers in a style which makes it news rather than propaganda.
Why Some News Items Need Rewriting
The second reason why your stories may not be getting the attention you wish is perhaps that they are written so that they cannot be used without extensive rewriting. News stories follow a very definite pattern. The first sentence, or lead, contains the "who, what, when, where, why" which make up the skeleton of the story. Later paragraphs add additional details in diminishing order of importance, and each paragraph is complete in itself, so that the story can be cut at any point without rewriting.
It is important to master this simple pattern. If an editor must hunt through a maze of unimportant details to find the essential facts of the story, he may decide it is not worth the time and effort. News staffs work under the pressure of meeting deadlines, and a story may fail to appear simply because there is no time to rewrite it.
The difficulty may even be so simple a matter as the readability of your copy. Typewritten, double-spaced copy, with generous margins to allow space for editing, has a much better chance of escaping the wastebasket than illegible, crowded pages that discourage a weary editor at first glance. Certain rules for preparation of copy are standard in newspaper offices, and following them will give your stories a professional appearance that creates a good first impression. You will find them summarized on page 22 of How to Use the Press, or listed in any journalism textbook.
Changing the Editor's Thinking
The third reason for failure to establish good press relations is a bit more elusive, but it too can be overcome by preserving effort. Not all editors are acquainted with the work and beliefs of Seventh-day Adventists. Some of them share the misconceptions common to many people. If you try to put yourself in the place of an editor who thinks of Adventists as a small, fanatical sect with no interest in this world and weird ideas about the next, it is easy to understand why his attitude may be rather indifferent toward the first story you bring him about your church.
But that misconception is not an insurmountable obstacle. It is rather an opportunity for you to replace mistaken ideas with a true picture of Adventists as sincere Christians who are accomplishing worth-while things for the benefit of their fellow men. By personal contacts, but even more through stories about Seventh-day Adventists in all their variety of activity---,educational, medical, welfare, mission, religious liberty, and temperance—you will have the privilege of changing the editor's way of thinking. Your stories may not appear in print at first, but they will have their effect, nonetheless, in -increasing co-operation and willingness to print Adventist news.
This is more than an attractive theory. Over and over again it has worked. Editors who had no previous acquaintance with Adventist work and who gave it only the briefest mention, if any, have been educated by the persistent, intelligently directed efforts of press secretaries and pastors to see that Adventists are making a valuable contribution to the life of the community and the world in general, and are, therefore, newsworthy. This, it seems to me, is the most important phase of denominational press relations, for newspaper editors are an important force in molding public opinion, and the influence of a friendly, well-informed editor may have far larger consequences than the publication of your news releases, important as that is.
So to the novice in press relations, I would suggest these three essentials : Master the basic principles of newspaper style and copy preparation; learn by study and practice what qualifies as news ; and cultivate a relationship of friendly understanding with your editor. If in all this you keep constantly in mind that by this means you are as surely preaching the message as if you stood in the pulpit, you will have the joy of bringing the message of a soon-coming Saviour to a far larger audience than you can ever hope to reach by personal contact.
