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At the Toronto July CFC AGM, the governors passed Motion 2010-17 creating a non-executive officer position of " Public Relations Coordinator " ( upgrading the prior position of Director of Publicity ). Bylaw 3 of the CFC Handbook, under Duties of Officers in Section 8C, gives the mandate of this position as:
8C. The Public Relations Coordinator will be responsible for promoting the image of the CFC and for promoting chess generally to the public. As such the Public Relations Coordinator will, among other things:
- deal with mainstream media to promote significant chess news, such as Canadian Chess Champions, a new Canadian GM, major tournaments like the Can. Closed, Canadian Open, Can. Women’s Closed, CYCC, etc., the various benefits accruing from playing chess and other positive aspects of the chess culture.
This position in its initial creation never got filled. And currently, the CFC is looking for a volunteer governor/member to fill the vacant Public Relations Coordinator position.
Because of this situation, the CFC has never developed a bank of Canadian mainstream media contacts who might be willing to publish CFC Press Releases on chess items, or to write articles on chess.
I have currently volunteered, in the interim, as a governor, to try to do some preliminary work on this issue, in advance of us finding the right volunteer to fill the position. I only have a limited amount of time to spend on this at the moment, and it will become even less in the Fall. But I am willing to put some volunteer time on the matter.
As such, I have recently written a press release on the participation of two of our juniors, IM Raja Panjwani, 2009 Canadian Junior Champion, and FM Shiyam Thavandiran, 2010 Canadian Junior Champion, in the recently concluded World Junior Championship in Poland. I have forwarded it to both the Toronto Star newspaper ( hard copy ), and the London Free Press ( hard copy ), since Raja and Shiyam are both at UWO in Sept.. It appears from what I can tell so far, that newspapers do not in any way acknowledge the receipt of press releases ( they receive too many daily ), and do not do so even if they actually publish them. So my first request is that if you see an item on this in either paper, you post here to alert me to this. I am told that generally chess articles are a hard sell to the Canadian press, and that I therefore must have very modest expectations as to my success on this. So it may well be that this first effort of mine ( and others ) will go nowhere. But it seems to me, that over time, CFC should be able to get some results in this area.
As well, I have already prepared a draft press release for mid-September on our Canadian Olympiad teams. For this second attempt, my second request deals with my building up for CFC a bank of Canadian media contacts to possibly use for this second press release. If you know of particular sections of specific newspapers ( hard copy or website ) that have in the past been amenable to chess articles, could you please contact me - bobarm@sympatico.ca . I would appreciate getting:
Name of newspaper ( and whether hard copy or website )
Section of the newspaper
Name of any contact person ( editor, journalist, etc. )
E-mail address for the particular contact
What information you have as to why you think this contact is amenable to chess articles/press releases
Lastly, if you feel that you personally might have more success than me at getting a chess item into a newspaper, because of your personal contact with someone you know, or with whom you've dealt previously, please contact me and I will be pleased to provide you with my press releases for you to use. In this case, I would especially ask you to consider publication in local free community papers, with which you may have had experience, and which are sometimes more amenable to the receipt of news content, due to their more limited news gathering operations.
Thanks for any help you can give me on this. I hope I might be able to build some type of file which may be helpful to a future Public Relations Coordinator.
Bob
8C. The Public Relations Coordinator will be responsible for promoting the image of the CFC and for promoting chess generally to the public. As such the Public Relations Coordinator will, among other things:
- deal with mainstream media to promote significant chess news, such as Canadian Chess Champions, a new Canadian GM, major tournaments like the Can. Closed, Canadian Open, Can. Women’s Closed, CYCC, etc., the various benefits accruing from playing chess and other positive aspects of the chess culture.
This position in its initial creation never got filled. And currently, the CFC is looking for a volunteer governor/member to fill the vacant Public Relations Coordinator position.
Because of this situation, the CFC has never developed a bank of Canadian mainstream media contacts who might be willing to publish CFC Press Releases on chess items, or to write articles on chess.
I have currently volunteered, in the interim, as a governor, to try to do some preliminary work on this issue, in advance of us finding the right volunteer to fill the position. I only have a limited amount of time to spend on this at the moment, and it will become even less in the Fall. But I am willing to put some volunteer time on the matter.
As such, I have recently written a press release on the participation of two of our juniors, IM Raja Panjwani, 2009 Canadian Junior Champion, and FM Shiyam Thavandiran, 2010 Canadian Junior Champion, in the recently concluded World Junior Championship in Poland. I have forwarded it to both the Toronto Star newspaper ( hard copy ), and the London Free Press ( hard copy ), since Raja and Shiyam are both at UWO in Sept.. It appears from what I can tell so far, that newspapers do not in any way acknowledge the receipt of press releases ( they receive too many daily ), and do not do so even if they actually publish them. So my first request is that if you see an item on this in either paper, you post here to alert me to this. I am told that generally chess articles are a hard sell to the Canadian press, and that I therefore must have very modest expectations as to my success on this. So it may well be that this first effort of mine ( and others ) will go nowhere. But it seems to me, that over time, CFC should be able to get some results in this area.
As well, I have already prepared a draft press release for mid-September on our Canadian Olympiad teams. For this second attempt, my second request deals with my building up for CFC a bank of Canadian media contacts to possibly use for this second press release. If you know of particular sections of specific newspapers ( hard copy or website ) that have in the past been amenable to chess articles, could you please contact me - bobarm@sympatico.ca . I would appreciate getting:
Name of newspaper ( and whether hard copy or website )
Section of the newspaper
Name of any contact person ( editor, journalist, etc. )
E-mail address for the particular contact
What information you have as to why you think this contact is amenable to chess articles/press releases
Lastly, if you feel that you personally might have more success than me at getting a chess item into a newspaper, because of your personal contact with someone you know, or with whom you've dealt previously, please contact me and I will be pleased to provide you with my press releases for you to use. In this case, I would especially ask you to consider publication in local free community papers, with which you may have had experience, and which are sometimes more amenable to the receipt of news content, due to their more limited news gathering operations.
Thanks for any help you can give me on this. I hope I might be able to build some type of file which may be helpful to a future Public Relations Coordinator.
Bob
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