Thread: Making it on the Local News

I see many professional dancers who are on local news shows. Are you ladies marketing yourselves specifically or do they come find you? I'm just wondering because if you're on the news you must be doing something right as far as really getting out in the community performing or marketing yourself.

Not too long after I started taking classes, the local newspaper came out to do a story on the studio where I was attending. In that case, the reporter cold-called the teacher. I'm sure some teachers do actively solicit the attention, and some coincidentally meet reporters at gigs or in regular life and a story evolves from that. Sometimes the reporter just gets the urge to do a feature on the dance and finds you.

If you are interested in getting attention, my guess is that your best bet (where you look newsworthy, instead of attention-desperate) would be to send formal press releases to your local media outlets when something interesting is happening in the dance community. Unless you are the only dancer in town or you are something really special, the fact that you dance just isn't all that interesting to them. They're trying to benefit their own business interests and serve the community. You want to provide them with leads on those angles. If you're doing a benefit for some charity, or your group has recently won some sort of national recognition, that might be a story they'd want to cover. They need information for their local events listings. Some papers accept small content submissions (e.g., a high-quality, captioned photo of your group performing at a recent public show, submitted in a timely manner). Really small papers may let you write your own feature. If you're not sure, there will usually be submission guidelines publicly posted. The point is to present yourself as a legitimate news or feature story, because they'll ignore obvious attempts to misappropriate them as free advertising.

Also, don't carpet bomb them will press releases. These are meticulous, detail-oriented people. They remember. Sending the same press release about classes every month will just fast-track you to the round file. If you don't have serious news, package your information in quarterly or larger chunks.

Originally Posted by Tourbeau

Not too long after I started taking classes, the local newspaper came out to do a story on the studio where I was attending. In that case, the reporter cold-called the teacher. I'm sure some teachers do actively solicit the attention, and some coincidentally meet reporters at gigs or in regular life and a story evolves from that. Sometimes the reporter just gets the urge to do a feature on the dance and finds you.

If you are interested in getting attention, my guess is that your best bet (where you look newsworthy, instead of attention-desperate) would be to send formal press releases to your local media outlets when something interesting is happening in the dance community. Unless you are the only dancer in town or you are something really special, the fact that you dance just isn't all that interesting to them. They're trying to benefit their own business interests and serve the community. You want to provide them with leads on those angles. If you're doing a benefit for some charity, or your group has recently won some sort of national recognition, that might be a story they'd want to cover. They need information for their local events listings. Some papers accept small content submissions (e.g., a high-quality, captioned photo of your group performing at a recent public show, submitted in a timely manner). Really small papers may let you write your own feature. If you're not sure, there will usually be submission guidelines publicly posted. The point is to present yourself as a legitimate news or feature story, because they'll ignore obvious attempts to misappropriate them as free advertising.

Also, don't carpet bomb them will press releases. These are meticulous, detail-oriented people. They remember. Sending the same press release about classes every month will just fast-track you to the round file. If you don't have serious news, package your information in quarterly or larger chunks.

I absolutely agree with Torbeau. If you opt to go after the media yourself you need to not only have professionally written and presented materials, but you also need to make sure you are contacting the right person at the media outlet you are interested in. I think many of the TV segments on dancers that I have seen are filmed live in-studio on morning shows. For these types of placements, you would need to contact the Producer or Guest Booker for the show you are interested in. If you are trying to get a reporter to cover an specific event, you might want to contact an Assignment Editor.