Get your March 26 message in your local press

• Are you coming to London for the TUC March for the Alternative on Saturday 26 March?
• Are you coming in a group with family, friends or colleagues?
• Is this the first time you’ve been on a march?
• Are you marching to protest about losing your job, or cuts in local services?

Regional and local media – newspapers, broadcast and online – are always on the lookout for a good local angle on what will be the important national story of the TUC March for the Alternative. If you’re coming on the march and you feel you have a good story to tell, why not approach your local media to see if they are interested in featuring you?

You can put the basic facts about your story into a press release:

• Keep it short, no more than one side of A4.
• Get the five Ws (who, what, when, why, and where) into the first few sentences.
• Keep it simple: use short words, short sentences and short paragraphs.
• Use a headline that tells the story in a clear and newsworthy way. Think about a headline you might see in your local paper. Local media will be particularly interested if you say you are going to London as part of a campaign to save a valued local service.
• Include a quotation in your name about why you are coming on the march. This adds a human interest angle to the release. Use facts and figures in the main body of the release but include personal views in the quote.
• If you are going on a coach and you have space to take other people from your town or city include this in the press release.
• Can you think of a good picture opportunity to go with the story? Will you be making a banner or posters featuring something local? If they can send their local photographer along it may get better coverage.
• Make sure you put the date at the top of the press release, and ensure you include a contact name and telephone number, day and evening in case the journalist has any more questions about your story.

Call your local papers and ask who you should email the press release to and when. You can also ring your local radio stations and find out who to send your press release to there.

Media UK have a directory of newspaper contacts and a directory of radio station contacts that you might find useful.

It’s not that long to the march now, so you should start to think about this now. Don’t forget that local papers for example may want to feature in the issue coming out just before the march and will therefore need to know about it a good ten days before March 26^th. If they are interested this will give you time to call you back and check any details.

The TUC national press office would love to hear your stories too, so please your press releases to: marchforthealternative@tuc.org.uk

Good luck!