Keeping journalists up to date
Daily newspapers remain the most important medium for reaching a broad public. Radio and television also have a wide reach. To ensure that journalists find out about your petition, inform them and provide them with all relevant facts, pictures and a compelling, personal story about your cause. You should inform the press when you launch your petition and, above all, invite them to all your offline actions and to the handover of the petition. Details of the handover
Please keep interested journalists informed about any developments in the meantime. Events that are thematically related to your petition, such as a holiday, a demonstration, or a draft law, are suitable starting points for a press release. Most of them have no experience with this, but editorial teams don't bite and all they can do is say no. Let's go:
Collect contacts: Find email addresses and phone numbers of editorial offices that might be interested in your issue. Possible points of overlap are: same topics (e.g. specialist newspapers), regional proximity (local newspapers) or ideological proximity (same beliefs).
make contact: Call the editorial offices and ask which email address is best for sending your information or ask for the editor's contact details. It is important to send a message (preferably in the form of a press release) to the right person or department, otherwise your information will get lost.
Write a press release: Send a press release about your petition. It should present all the facts objectively and to the point and include contacts for further information. Press release checklist:
- Subject: A summary sentence that piques curiosity. For example: 'Dresden woman starts sign language petition for deaf son'
- First paragraph: Here you answer the questions who, what, when, and where directly. No long introductory sentences!
- Middle part: Here you answer the questions how and why and tell the backstory. There is room for interesting details here.
- Celebrities: Inform the press if your petition is supported by prominent figures. The same applies to politicians.
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Ending:
Here you should list all further information. The following should not be missing:
- the short link to the petition
- Your contact details (email address and telephone number) and the offer to be available as an interview partner
- Dates of your planned actions
- Write a maximum of one page.
- Please send us meaningful, good-quality pictures.
Online: If an article about your petition has appeared online (almost all print articles also appear online), make sure to include the link to the petition! This way, you will receive a large number of signatures and interested parties can stay up to date on the status of the matter. Be sure to call the editorial offices afterward to point out any missing links – we do this too, but we don't get every press release either.
Support through openPetition: We will support you in all these steps. It is important that you keep us updated. If we notice that you are strongly committed, then we will also commit ourselves to you. For example, if we learn of a planned handover, we can advise you and, if necessary, inform you about it through our channels.