Behind the Headlines

By Paula Wethington / paula@monroenews.com

Well, the avalanche has begun. And I’m not talking about the piles of snow. I’m talking about the piles of press releases and event announcements that arrive at The Monroe Evening News starting about three weeks before Easter.

You might think that back to school or Christmas season is the busiest time of year for community events in Monroe County. Guess again. The peak happens in spring with Easter egg hunts, craft shows, school plays, fish fries, Lenten church services, fundraiser auctions, car shows, golf outings …

And since most planning committees want to avoid Easter weekend, Mother’s day weekend and Memorial Day weekend, a lot of events are crammed into the rest of the dates on the calendar.

If you, or any committee that you serve on, is planning a community event or fundraiser this spring, you will want to get those notices sent to the newsroom as soon as you have the details confirmed. The sooner we get the notice, the longer your event will be posted (and seen!) on the MonroeTalks calendar and the more likely we can arrange for the best available date for your notice to appear in the print edition.

My long-standing recommendation has been to get the announcement to the newsroom at least a week before the event or reservation deadline if you intend it to run on Community Page, and two or three weeks ahead for events that are intended for the once-a-week lists such as Arts & Entertainment.

It’s a bad idea to wait until two or three days before the event to send your announcement. You never know when crazy things will happen with e-mails inaccessible because of a power outage, stamped mail that runs into a delay at the post office, snow storms that shut down the roads for a day, and telephone tag messages that can’t be returned on time.

You’ve put a lot of time and effort into planning that event. I don’t want you to miss out on publicity opportunities because the notice arrived too late for the newspaper to help you with your marketing plan.

And what about the other free publicity you might be able to arrange for in Monroe County? I know, from having made phone calls on that very question a couple of years ago, that there are several free options that work very well in conjunction with a newspaper announcement. And the more frequently someone sees a notice, the more likely they are to remember it. But you need to make those additional publicity arrangements three to four weeks ahead in some cases!