[Gayle]

There are a few factors at play here and it's a fine balance.

I can certainly understand where Leon is coming from because I'm in the same position myself. There are many times when I send info to the papers and they don't print it or get it slightly wrong. So it can sometimes seem frustrating when you think you've got a good news story and it isn't printed.

But the other side of it is that papers are driven by advertising to some degree and so why should they print a story about a company that doesn't advertise - what's in it for them? We make money for tickets for shows so why should they give us free advertising? We tend to have more success with coverage of free and community events.

We can't afford to advertise so in effect we have to take pot luck with the papers and hope that they'll print something about us but not gripe if they don't. Having said that, our local reporters are usually really good and if you approach them with something interesting then they'll happily go with it. Quite often they contact me for stories because we've built up a relationship over the years and they know that I can usually fill a corner of a page if they need to fill some space.

I come from a Google Page Ranking background so I know that even the best Google Page Ranking companies work on a 60% hit rate with press releases - some will be picked up but others won't.

I would suggest to anyone that wants to have things printed about them to prepare the photos and releases themselves and send them to the local papers. I send info in on a Sunday so that it is there waiting for them on Monday morning when they're starting to work on that week's paper. No point sending in later as they're rushing to print and definitely don't send things in on a Wednesday because that's print day and you've little or no chance of getting a story in.

If you send an article in make sure it's in the style of the paper so that they can print it as it is without rewriting. Take a photo and email it in with the article.

Send listings seperately to the listings page - don't expect reporters to pass that info on to the listings as well as printing an article. But for the listings simply put the information that you want printing in that column i.e. the bare details.