If you get a call from a reporter who works for an alternative newspaper, be on your guard, and don’t take the interview any less seriously than you would if a reporter from your local daily newspaper had called.
That’s the advice from Ken Haseley from the Ammerman Experience, a media training company. In this week’s edition of PRWeek, he says it may be tempting to dismiss these free weekily tabloids as news for the counterculture, but other news outlets rely on them to do news gathering. So the story you ignore may take on another life elsewhere.
He also says that because these newspapers devote a lot of space to a story, they might be your best opportunity to explain your side of the story in some detail.
So return their calls quickly, give them the same respect you do other media outlets, get your experts in front of them, and plan your key messages before the interview.
Good advice, Ken.
The list that you linked to in this post is a list of radical, left-wing magazines, not “alternative newspapers.”
Here’a a list of alternative newspapers:
http://aan.org/alternative/Aan/NewsweeklyDirectory
Richard Karpel
Executive Director
Association of Alternative Newsweeklies
1250 Eye Street N.W., Suite 804
Washington, D.C. 20005-5982
http://aan.org
http://AltWeeklies.com
Richard, thanks for pointing out the difference.