Can’t take your eyes off this year’s election coverage? Are you tired of reading the same ‘ole rhetoric on the so -called “Youthquake?” Would you jump at an opportunity to report on the 2008 election and how it impacts your community? If you’ve answered YES, then we want to hear from you!

Rock the Vote in partnership with WireTap magazine is searching for aspiring or established reporters for Rock the Trail. Sponsored by AT&T, Rock the Trail will capture today’s politics through the eyes and in the words of young voters. Rock the Trail reporters will deliver insightful and compelling blogs, articles and videos from the communities they live in, reporting on young people’s top issues such as jobs, the economy and college affordability. Content will be posted on http://www.rockthevote.com, http://www.wiretapmag.org , http://www.BET.com, and will also be available for viewing on AT&T mobile phones. In addition, we will be working with the washingtonpost.com to contribute unique perspectives complementary to the site’s vast coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign.

Entries will be judged by an advisory panel of distinguished journalists including: Jeff Chang, award-winning author of Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip Hop Generation, Sian-Pierre Regis, producer, BET News, Peter Rothberg, associate publisher, The Nation magazine and Jose Antonio Vargas, political feature writer, The Washington Post. Individuals will be chosen based on the creativity and originality of his or her application, and ability to write in a clear, concise manner.

Rock the Trail reporters will be paid a monthly stipend and supplied with a laptop, cell phone and video camera to rock the 2008 campaign trail. Reporters will interview candidates, elected officials, campaigners, young voters and Rock the Vote artists discussing everything from the Presidential race to mayoral elections and anything in between.

So, if you’re a U.S. citizen between the ages of 18-29 and interested in reporting on one of the most exciting times in U.S. politics, please click here to complete an application by May 7th (not a minute after 11:59pm.)

Rock the Trail is part of a yearlong alliance between AT&T and Rock the Vote to engage young people in the democratic process by bringing the election to them through their mobile phones.

Additional Information:

• Entry Guidelines
• Online Application Form

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This is the fourth and final part of my Developing a Traditional Media Strategy series. Part 1 covered media lists and press releases, Part 2 covered working with reporters, Part 3 covered media monitoring, and this post will cover rapid response and letters-to-the-editor.

Build your list

The first step in creating a rapid response program is to create a list of the newspapers in your area and to find the email addresses for submitting letters to the editor. You should be able to find the information online on their contact page or on the op-ed page. You will want to take note of any other pertinent information that you find. For example, some newspapers will not look at letters that have been submitted to any other publication. You also want to see if they post any guidelines on letter length or format, which you will want to convey to your team.

Assemble your team

Find your best writers and ask them if they would be willing to join your rapid response team. When certain issues arise these people will be those you rely on to send letters to the papers to which you direct them. For very important issues that are getting a lot of coverage you may want to blast your entire email list about it, but your core rapid response team will be your most reliable group that you count on to follow through.

Educate your team

It is important that for each rapid response item you send your team the information they need. Here is a list of some of that information:

• A general introduction of the issue and why it is important. Sell them on why they should put the effort in on the issue.
• Talking points that you would like them to follow in their letters. These will help your team write their letters and keep them on the message that you are trying to spread.
• The papers that you want them to submit their letters to with the email addresses for submission.
• Letter-writing tips and guidelines, such as length (normally 250-500 words), that they should be concise, and that they should be careful to avoid anything libelous.

Determining what to write about

Topics for rapid response should have recently been in the news and be relevant to the readers of the paper. If the topic is not relevant the letters will be ignored. Choose topics that help you get out your organization’s message.

Talk Radio

If you have a heads up that are certain topic is going to be discussed or a certain person interviewed on a talk radio station, the rapid response process is similar to LTE. Email your team with the talking points, the date, time, and channel of the broadcast, and the call-in phone number. If you are finding out about a talk radio broadcast at the last minute, call your most reliable people, brief them on what to say, and have them call in.

So that was a basic overview of rapid response and LTE. If you have more advanced tips, advice, programs that worked for you, etc. leave a comment and share.

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It is important for you to know what is being said about your organization in both new and traditional media outlets. You may also want to keep track of posts and stories about candidates, issues, and legislation that your organization is interesting in. This post will give you two tips to efficiently monitor the media. These are the methods I use in compiling all the stories in my link posts.

Tip 1: Google Alerts are your friends

I love Google Alerts. They are great not only because you are sent an email every time your selected keywords show up somewhere, but also because from these you find many great new news sources and niche blogs that you may have not known about otherwise. Having effective Google Alerts depends on the same things that result in effective Google searches: it’s all about selecting your query so it only returns results that are pertinent to you.

The Google Search Guide is a good basic reference. In finding stories for my link posts, I use keywords such as “youth vote” “young voter” “young democrat” “college democrat” and “YDA.” Using quotation marks in your query will only return results that have all the words in order. In the case of the query “young democrat” not using the quotation marks would result in delivering all posts with either the word ‘young’ or ‘democrat,’ which is not specific enough to be useful.

Notice that my keyword is “young democrat” instead of “young democrats.” The former keyword will return results for both ‘young democrat’ and ‘young democrats,’ where “young democrats” would exclude ‘young democrat’ results. I would have missed out on a story that talked about “a young democrat from Arizona.”

My personal preferences for my Google Alerts is to have them Comprehensive (returning results from news, blogs, web, video, and groups) and to be sent as-it-happens (as opposed to once-a-day or weekly). This casts the widest net and returns the results to while they are still fresh.

When you are starting out write down a list of the topics that you would like to be alerted about. Obviously you will want your organization’s name, but there may be a lot more that would be useful to you. Once you have your list think about the best keywords to get you that result, add those alerts, and then adjust based on trial and error. I remember when I was setting up a Google Alert to get stories about Harry Mitchell (the best member of Congress in the United States, in my opinion) before he was elected to Congress. At first I used the keyword “Harry Mitchell,” but I noticed that most of my results had nothing to do with the Harry Mitchell I was looking for. I then tried ‘Arizona “Harry Mitchell”‘ and got better results. If you aren’t getting exactly what you want out of your alert, play with it until you do.

To learn how to really get specific searches, check out 20 Tips for More Efficient Google Searches.

Tip 2: RSS feeds will save you time and effort

RSS (Real Simple Syndication) in my opinion is the greatest thing since Firefox (which should be your default web browser). No longer must we individually visit every website we would like to read, not knowing whether or not it has been updated. No longer must we traverse the deluge of browser bookmarks, wasting time, energy, and bandwidth. Now the content comes to us, and it is a beautiful thing.

For those yet unfamiliar with the wonders of RSS, here is the basic concept. Your RSS aggregator (more popularly known as a feed reader) receives new content from the sites you subscribe to as it is published. All of the posts are aggregated in one place, so you don’t have to hop from site to site and you always know when there is new content.

The first thing you need to do is get a feed reader. You have many different options here. There are two main categories of readers: web-based and desktop application. I prefer to use a web-based reader because it enables me to read my feeds from any computer with an internet connection, as well as from my Blackberry. I use Google Reader, which is in my opinion the best option by far. The advantage of desktop application readers had been the ability to read previously downloaded feeds while you were offline, but now that many online readers include offline capabilities, that advantage has been negated. Some other online readers include Newsgator and Bloglines, as well as the Yahoo!, Google, and Live portals. Since you are probably going to be really working those feeds, I suggest the more robust online readers over the portal options, which tend to give you more of a cursory glance at a few feeds.

So you have chosen a feed reader. Now you need to find the feeds that you are interested in. Let me help you with your first few. Subscribe to Kevin Bondelli’s YD Blog. Subscribe to the YDA Blog. Subscribe to Future Majority. First let me commend you on your first three subscriptions, you have excellent taste. Now you need to subscribe to the other feeds you are interested in. Almost every newspaper offers RSS feeds for its articles segmented by topic or section. Visit the websites of your local newspapers and subscribe to those sections that you want to track. Go to leftyblogs.com and subscribe to the blogs in your state. Look at the blogrolls of blogs you currently read and check out those blogs to see if you would like to subscribe to them. If a website or blog has been coming up a lot on your Google Alerts for your keywords, it is probably a good idea to subscribe. Your subscription list will probably be changing often as you add new feeds and delete those that have not been useful. The longer you use your reader the better your subscription list will get, so keep it up.

For a huge list of RSS resources, check out the Ultimate RSS Toolbox at Mashable.

Conclusion

Between Google Alerts and tracking RSS feeds you will get pretty good coverage of the topics that interest you, as well as what is being said about your organization. There are other ways to keep track of stories and trends, but I am leaving the responsibility of sharing those ways with you. Leave a comment and share your methods, ideas, and resources.

Previous articles in the Traditional Media Strategy series:

Part 1: Media Lists and Press Releases

Part 2: Working With Reporters

Next post: Part 4: Rapid Response and LTE

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In Part 1 of the Developing a Traditional Media Strategy series I discussed how to create a media contact list and best practices for writing and sending press releases. Today’s post will give you some advice on working with reporters once you have their attention.

Tips for working with reporters

• No matter what you may have seen on television, there is no such thing as “off-the-record.” Don’t say anything to a reporter that you do not want to see in print.
• When a reporter calls for an interview that you were not expecting, ask what the subject of the interview will be and if you can call them back immediately. Don’t get caught off guard in an interview. Ask the reporter about their deadline (this let’s them know you understand how the process works and lets you know your time frame). The time between the reporter’s initial call and your return call is your time to prepare for the interview. Jot down the talking points that you may want to use and gather any statistics and keep them in front of you as a reference. This will ensure that you stay on message and sound informed.
• If you are at a social event with a reporter, watch what you say and how you act. A reporter is never truly off duty, so make sure you don’t do or say anything that would be an embarrassment to you or your organization.
• Respect a reporter’s deadline. If you leave them hanging they will not come back to you for interviews or comments.
• Keep your interviews to the facts. Don’t make baseless accusations, don’t whine, and don’t use ad hominem attacks.
• Once you have completed your interview, ask when the story will run. You don’t want to miss it.
• If you are going to interview in person or on camera, make sure you are dressed appropriately and are adequately groomed.
• The pivot is your friend, as long as you are the one doing it. If you are doing an interview about increased youth turnout in your state, and the reporter is shifting the subject to something else, bring the interview right back. This is another one of those subtle arts, but you can learn from watching television interviews and talking to communications professionals. Just make sure to never be rude, condescending, or otherwise offensive, or your pivot will become a stumble.

Those are a few things to keep in mind when you are working with reporters. I an sure there is a lot more advice on this subject out there, so share it by leaving a comment.

Tomorrow’s post – Part 3: Media Monitoring

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This is the first in a four-part series about developing a traditional media strategy.

So I have written about reaching out to new media, but it is always important to develop a traditional media strategy to get your message out to print, radio, and television news. This post will help you create a media contact list and learn some best practices about writing and sending press releases.

Building your media list

So before you can send out press releases, you need people to send them out to. This is why you need to create a media contact list of reporters and editors that are on beats that would be interested in covering your organization. Read through your local newspapers and find the names of the reporters that cover local and state politics. Once you have a list of names for reporters that may be interested in calling you, find the contact page of the news organizations website (here is the LA Times contact page as an example). From here you can complete your contact list. You may want to call the reporters before you ever send them anything to make sure that your organization falls under the scope of their beat and ask permission to send them your releases. You can go either way here. Some people like to build a relationship with a reporter first, others like to start sending releases to avoid being blown off in the first place. Create a spreadsheet in Excel or your software of choice and you are ready to go.

Sending press releases

The first rule of press releases in a traditional media strategy is to not overwhelm the reporter or editor with the sheer volume of releases. They get a ridiculous amount of releases sent to them every day, so don’t be part of the problem. Only send releases that are interesting, current, and relevant to the reporter, paper, and their readership.

The most effective way to make sure a reporter is aware of your release is to give them a call. Once again, don’t abuse this. Every communications director and press secretary worth their Blackberry does this. The important thing here is to be considerate of the reporter. Don’t try to badger them into writing your story. If you do this right you will be building a relationship with the reporters, which means they will trust you more than the random person sending a press release and will possibly come to you when they need a comment for a story pertaining to something relevant to your organization.

Send your releases from an official email address from your organization. Your release is much more likely to be taken seriously.

Content and format of a press release

Here are some of the rules of press release content and formatting:

General Rules:

• A release should address the 5 Ws: Who, What, When, Where, and Why.
• If you are writing about an event make sure to include the date, time, and location.
• The release should be around a page to a page-and-a-half double-spaced.
• Your release should include contact information for the person the reporter should call for more information.
• Always end your release with “###” or “<END>” to let the reporter know that they have reached the end of the release. If you have a hard copy of a release always have “<MORE>” at the bottom of the first page.
• Fonts – use one of the big three: Arial, Times New Roman, or Verdana. Don’t try anything fancy with your fonts. If you send me a release in Vladimir Script (or worse, Comic Sans) you are about to enter a world of pain.
• I personally like including my organization’s logo on my release to help draw attention and show that it is coming from us. If you choose to do this in your email releases, DO NOT include the image as an attachment to the email. Host the image online and have the document call for it. To do this in Microsoft Word (for sending out through Outlook): Insert>>Picture>>From File. Instead of using the picture on your hard drive you just enter the URL of the image that you have on your web server.

Headline:

• The headline is arguably the most important part of your release. A good headline is the difference between getting noticed and being lost in the crowd of other releases flooding the editor’s inbox. It should be very clear from the headline exactly what the release is about, don’t get too cute with it.
• The headline should be bold and in a larger type than the rest of the release.
• The general rule for capitalization in a headline is to capitalize every word that contains four or more characters.
• End your release with a brief description of your organization. Here is the YDAZ about language for releases: YDAZ is the youth arm of the Arizona Democratic Party, working to build strong chapters and a solid youth voting bloc for Democrats statewide. As a chapter of the Young Democrats of America, YDAZ mobilizes young people under the age of 36 to participate in the electoral process, influence the ideals of the Democratic Party and develop the skills of the youth generation to serve as leaders at the local, state, and national level.

First Paragraph:

• <city>, <state>: should start off the first paragraph of every press release. The reporter needs to know where the news is located.
• Your first paragraph needs to be concise and make clear the content of the release. A tip I have often heard is to write the first paragraph as if the reporter has not read your headline (which sometimes is actually the case).

To look at some examples of press releases, you can view all of the AZ Democratic Party’s past releases here on their website.

There is more to writing and sending press releases than this. If you want help ask some people in your area that work in communications. The communications director or press secretary at your state party may be willing to help.

If you have any questions, ideas, etc. leave a comment.

Tomorrow’s post: Part 2: Working With reporters

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One of the best ways to get your message out to an audience that is likely to be receptive to your message is by working with established bloggers to cover your organization. Good blogger outreach is a subtle art, and this post is a crash course in implementing a strong outreach program.

Step 1: Find the important political blogs in your state.

You can’t do blogger outreach without knowing who the bloggers are. One of the best resources for finding your local blogs is leftyblogs.com, which has a unique blogroll and feed for every state. Your search should start here. Another great resource is Google Blog Search, which allows you to search a vast directory of blogs using keywords. The right keywords are important here, so if you are looking for blogs in Wyoming you should try combinations like: Wyoming+Democrat, Wyoming+progressive, Wyoming+politics. Other resources that may be useful are Technorati, DMOZ Open Directory Project, or my favorite little secret, Blogshares.

Step 2: Find contact information for those bloggers.

Blogging is a conversation, so most bloggers are good about putting their contact information on their site. For example, on my blog there is a Contact Kevin option on my top navigation bar. Look for an about or contact page, or look at the blog sidebar for a preferred method of contact. A lot of bloggers make it clear which method of contact is best for them. Add the contact information to your list of blogs. This will be your blog media list. I have created a Google Document of an example spreadsheet here. Notice that the spreadsheet include a lot of fields for the various types of contact information. Use what works for you. Also notice that I have phone listed as a field. You may know some bloggers personally and have their phone numbers (like many of you have mine) and that may be a way you are able to contact them. However, if a lot of people are going to have access to your media list make sure that it is okay for that person’s number to be listed. A more conservative is approach is to have the phone field just say yes or no, and possibly the name of the member of your organization that has the number. For blogs with multiple authors, the blog is listed as many times as there are authors with contact information.

Step 3: Read through the posts of each blog.

Dip into the blogs archive and get a good feel for the kind of content that the blogger writes. Also note how frequently the blogger posts. A couple of things to take note of is to see if the author posts press releases verbatim (I’ve been known to do this) or posts announcements of upcoming local events.

Step 4: Build relationships with those bloggers.

The best way to build a relationship with a blogger is to make substantive comments on their posts. Just leaving a “great post” or “interesting” isn’t going to cut it. If there is one thing a blogger appreciates it is an active commenter as a member of their blog community. Most of the time comment forms will include a field for your website URL, and if it does make sure you use your organization’s blog address (if you don’t have one, use your organization’s website, but read my post on blogging as a Young Democrat chapter and get started on that blog. If you don’t have a website, I hold you personally responsible for my increased blood pressure, and I will be writing a post in the near future to help you remedy the situation, for both our sakes). You want to make sure that the blogger knows that it is you that has been making all those great comments on their site.

Step 5: You have the relationship, now use it.

Just be careful not to abuse it. Only contact a blogger about writing something that is important. If you are constantly flooding them with every little thing, at best your important stuff is going to be lost in white noise, and at worst you have a blogger that is annoyed with you and your organization. If there is one thing that you don’t want it is a blogger that is pissed at you. Ask the blogger if they would like to be added to your organization’s press release list (don’t have one? Well I have a post coming up to help you out with that). Make it a point to ask this of bloggers that you have seen post releases on their site. Remember that bloggers are always looking for things to write about, so if you have quality information to send them there is a good chance that they are going to use it. If you have a really big piece of news, contact the most read blogger of the bunch and let them know that they are getting first dibs at it. Bloggers love being the first to break a big story even more than they love good comments. This increases your chance of getting covered by that top-level blog, and lots of bloggers follow the lead of the top bloggers.

A couple of things to keep in mind:

• Be professional and careful when emailing a blogger. You never know if that email is going to end up verbatim on one of their blog posts. There are some bloggers that absolutely love to do this when someone sends them something ridiculous.
• Never get mad and lash out at a blogger for not writing about something you sent or for not writing exactly how you wanted.
• Some of the people you know personally may be bloggers, and will be the most receptive to you. Marshall Spevak of New Jersey contacted me over Google Chat to tell me about John Adler’s fundraising success, and from that Adler got a featured candidate post.
• Blog outreach is not an overnight process. It takes time to build relationships and to establish your legitimacy. The benefit though is that once a blogger trusts you they may even come to you asking if there is anything going on with your organization they can write about.
• The blogosphere is often an echo chamber, so by getting coverage your message could spread all over the place, and that is exactly what you want.

So there is your introductory course in blogger outreach. If you have been running a blogger outreach program that has been successful, let me know about it. If you have any questions about this post or more advice on the subject, leave a comment or contact me.

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Anya Kamenetz’s column on Yahoo Finance entitled “The Big Issues for Young Voters” has been getting slaughtered in the article’s comments. Here are a selection of negative comments that illustrate the perceptions of young voters by the finance-page demographic. All spelling is left in context.

Socialists Rock! Oh yeah and John McCain is still breathing… hey I could do unbiased journalism too…. Wake up yahoo! This is a personal finance page (read: wealthier people who rather see people like this roasting on a spit before seeing their taxes go up to support those who dont know what responsibility is).. Get with the program.

the “youth vote”….the most over rated thing since paris hilton.

no, no, no. you must stop drinking the Democratic/socialist koolaid and start laying responsibility at he feet of the younger generation! when i attended college i worked 30 hours a week and took a full workload of glasses while the spoiled kids joined frats and partied all night long. what really needs to happen is kids need to be required (in high school) to take several classes in personal finance to understand how to handle their finances and not just make a plan to move back in with mom and pop when things go to hell and they saddle up a mountain of credit card debt. i am sick and tired of the dems telling voters the government has let them down. are you kidding me?? i have never taken out an ARM and have always lived way below my means, avoiding the financial ruin so many Americans face today. blaming the government is a cop out. the irresponsible all want the responsible homeowner and taxpayer to bail them out! Obama and Clinton are selling a socialist plan they say people are entitled to, but i say you get what you work for, so the younger generation needs to get to work and act fiscally responsible, which our role model government is not inclined to do! wake up and smell the roses Anya!

I don’t even know where to start. For those that don’t know, Anya got her start with a book she wrote about all of Generation Debt’s problems. Great, so we’ve established that as a college student she could put a long report together saying things suck out there. Now, for those of you that haven’t read the book, I saved you the trouble. As for this article, it is much worse because Anya has a degree in journalism, not economics and surely not finance, at least I hope not because it would only be a testament to how bad education has gotten. She states all the problems we have but never has a decent solution. She wants more money in the GI Bill and for colleges. Great, the GI Bill helps about 1% of those going to college and the government giving more to colleges will just result in more domes being built for sports. That’s brilliant. Next idea, let’s discuss social healthcare that we can’t afford as a society and will never get. She writes about young voters as though inexperienced young people have a clue what is waiting for them outside of college. If they did, they would not go to college and wrack up countless thousands in debt. She and her like are the problem young people are faced with. At one point she says our grandparents were better off with manufacturing jobs and pensions, but then she turns and says that the children of tomorrow can’t have pensions and good paying jobs because we have to abide by free trade laws. Anya obviously doesn’t even know why she is saying that because she just made the argument against free trade. I do not wonder how Anya got the position writing for Yahoo. What I wonder is how she keeps it with crap like this!

Anya, your musings on politics are amatuerish. The entire purpose of this column was simply to plug your awful book, wasn’t it?.. I ask Yahoo! Finance, what in the world were you thinking in hiring this girl? P.S. Anya you need to wear more makeup.. I can still see the bags under your eyes..

The much-vaunted “youth vote” comes up every election cycle, yet the same thing always happens: the youth have virtually no impact on the result. Obviously, this article is a complete disaster from start to end. Does she honestly believe Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, and the national debt will ever be brought “into balance”? And given the massive financial problems facing this country, sending more people to college to obtain largely worthless degrees is moronic to say the least. She is obviously much better suited to write for college newspapers and free city magazines than a serious Yahoo Finance column (Rock The Vote? “Declaration of Interdependence”???? How can anyone take this buffoon seriously?)

Don’t worry readers, not all young people are this ridiculous . . . but at least she’s cute and went to Yale!

Generation Y members need to come up with their own opinions instead of copying the group on Gootube or Digg. They are such heavy evangelists of group thinking, election results R now decided by only 1 or 2 people high up in the media corporations.

Young people are are rocking the vote and I wish they wouldn’t. It’s bad enough the more experienced aging population sucks at picking politicians (Democrat and Republican)… now we have an entire generation of Americans raised by television who are picking our politicians. Contrary to this article, our young people don’t know what the issues are. They don’t know how to read, that’s why our newspapers are failing and picture-based gossip magazines like “IN TOUCH” are thriving. All they know is what the advertisements are telling them the issues are.

These negative comments are overwhelmingly dominated by McCarthy-esque name-calling, throwing around the labels Socialist, Communist, Leninist, Marxist, Soviet, etc. They also have mastered the ad hominem fallacy with demeaning comments such as “Anya you need to wear more makeup.. I can still see the bags under your eyes..” and “at least she’s cute and went to Yale!” And for commenters that claim young people are uninformed and are single-minded, they sure don’t want to have to see any opinions that contradict their currently-held beliefs: “This is a personal finance page (read: wealthier people who rather see people like this roasting on a spit before seeing their taxes go up to support those who dont know what responsibility is).. Get with the program.”

From the comments we can see their thoughts on young voters. For me the most offensive comment was “Young people are are rocking the vote and I wish they wouldn’t…They don’t know how to read, that’s why our newspapers are failing and picture-based gossip magazines like “IN TOUCH” are thriving. All they know is what the advertisements are telling them the issues are.” Seriously, to use the parlance of the internet, WTF!?! Young people don’t know how to read and we shouldn’t vote. Our minds have been brainwashed by advertising and we can’t think for ourselves. Apparently they haven’t looked at all the research showing that young people are the LEAST affected by advertising and MOST skeptical of it. Newspaper readership is falling because more Americans across the board are going online for their news, not because of generational illiteracy.

From these sentiments we can see the kind of message we as young voters need to send: Our generation is engaged and informed, and we will stand up for our ideas and beliefs despite the myriad systemic obstacles previous generations have put in our way.

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