Occasionally someone will ask me if we do news conferences. Yes and no, I answer. We’ll set up news conferences for clients when they’re appropriate, but those circumstances have become increasingly rare. It might still be possible to fill a room with reporters in Toronto or New York, but it’s not easy in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

It wasn’t always this way. Only a decade ago, local news conferences were much more common. Public relations people would dutifully set up rows of chairs, podiums with urns of coffee at the back of the room. Displays and demonstrations and other things of visual interest were set up and media kits full of information assembled. And the rooms would fill with radio, television and print reporters.

That was at a time when news people were more plentiful. Today, there are scarcely more than half a dozen newsrooms of any size and energy in Winnipeg. For radio, you have CBC Radio One, Radio Canada (CBC French) and CJOB, all of which are staffed with more on-air hosts than reporters. For television, there’s CBC, Global and CTV (easily the most important of the three based on ratings). There’s also CITY TV which still airs local news on its Breakfast Television broadcast. In print, there’s the Winnipeg Sun and the Winnipeg Free Press. It’s instructive that even The Free Press, which has the largest and most active newsroom, is a tough sell to get out to news events.

All these newsrooms have been shrinking in recent years and many radio stations have given up the idea of generating their own news entirely. So there just aren’t that many reporters around to show up to a news conference.

As a result we tell our clients that the traditional news conference isn’t the way to go except in circumstances where you have intense public interest in a subject and limited time to satisfy multiple interview requests. For example, you might have a genuine crisis on your hands that is of great public interest and you need to release information to a broad audience all at once. (The police still do this on a regular basis as do many other emergency services organizations, though they characterize these events as briefings rather than the more formal ‘news conference.’) On the other hand, you may also have a visiting celebrity to whom you need to restrict access (due to his or her popularity and limited availability).

In the main, except for special events, media relations efforts in Winnipeg and Manitoba are more commonly one-on-one efforts. We tend to pitch our stories more actively and directly than we did before to individual reporters, editors, news directors and on-air hosts. There’s just too much competition for the attention of a dwindling pool of news people.

This scenario is even more pronounced outside of Winnipeg. Brandon has the Brandon Sun, CKX TV and a couple of local radio newsrooms. There are small weekly papers and rural radio stations across Manitoba who are even more strained for resources than their big city counterparts. In Saskatchewan, where we regularly reach out to both urban (Saskatoon, Regina, Moose Jaw, Yorkton, Prince Albert) and rural audiences, the problem is even more pronounced with even smaller newsrooms. The same goes for Northwestern Ontario where geography and a battered regional economy combine to reduce the local news pool (it’s a five hour drive from Thunder Bay to Kenora and I’d be surprised if there are even two dozen local reporters to cover the whole area).

Notwithstanding the challenge it places on our democracy where the media have long formed an ‘unofficial opposition’, it also makes our job of media relations that much more challenging.

It’s interesting to note that where traditional newsrooms have fallen away from covering some stories, hyper-local news websites have begun to pick up the slack. In Winnipeg, for example, you should check out www.ChrisD.ca. ChrisD.ca is one of many local bloggers we reach out to on behalf of clients. In fact we spend as much time using social media - Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Picasa - and talking to bloggers on any particular topic as we do talking to reporters.

Get used to it. The days of multiple, large newsrooms are over.

It’s Halloween - National UNICEF Day in Canada. As the PR agency for UNICEF’s Prairie Region, we’ve been very busy securing media coverage about this year’s Trick-or-Treat campaign. We’ve run several events this month and fielded interviews across Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

Our goal with this kind of campaign is to work creatively with our client and the media to ensure the messages we want are getting across and that the media is getting good stories to cover.

To do that, we staged our first ever celebrity pumpkin carving contest here in Winnipeg. We also organized three simultaneous school events in Regina, Saskatoon and Winnipeg where children ‘walked for water’ to simulate how millions of African children must walk to get their daily drinking water. We were on the phone to radio hosts for the past three weeks and collaborated with  Shaw TV and CityTV’s Breakfast Television to help them produce UNICEF-themed segments.

All in all, we’re very pleased that our ‘earned media’ was way up this year compared to last. We certainly hope that once all the money is counted that the ‘earned fundraising’ is also up this year too.

In addition to the widespread coverage on television and radio, here are a few of the stories we generated in print and online:

Winnipeg Free Press
Pumpkin carving is not for the fainthearted

Winnipeg Sun
Pumpkin Prowess

Regina Leader-Post
Coming together to make Halloween safe
Learning about life in Africa

Saskatoon Star-Phoenix
Walk for Water

If you haven’t donated to UNICEF this year yet, please do so at www.trickortreatforunicef.ca.  The campaign raises money to build and outfit schools in Rwanda and Malawi.

Media relations is almost always a crap shoot - especially if you’re pitching soft news. You never know what kind of news day you’ll be up against and sometimes newsrooms can be unpredictable as to what they want to cover.

As a former reporter, I know the first step is to try to pitch a story to the media that’s relevant to their audiences and find something that works in their media. Make sure you have a visual story to tell for television. Make sure you have details and context as well as a good photo op for print. Radio thrives on being instantaneous and requires a good speaker who can break complex ideas down to sound bites. Online media (see all of the above) thrives on immediacy.

Media relations (and media training) is an important part of what we do at Dooley Communications. Right now, we’re doing a lot of work in this regard for UNICEF Canada. Last month, we helped them with publicity around a special meeting on the sexual exploitation of children in Winnipeg. This month, we’re working on the annual Trick or Treat campaign.We have an entire month of events and activities planned and high hopes of earning some positive media attention.

Sometimes being good at media relations means being nimble. Yesterday was a case in point. We heard that one of our UNICEF schools in Regina was holding an assembly today featuring a popular local Canadian Idol contestant. We quickly put together a media advisory and made sure it made it into the right hands of the major media outlets in Regina. This morning, we were pleased to see reporters from two television stations and the major daily paper out to cover the event. I’ll post the links later.

UNICEF has been a big part of Halloween in Canada for generations, and Dooley Communications is pleased to be helping the Prairies Region office publicize the annual Trick or Treat campaign throughout October.

It’s a busy time as we gear up our efforts to spread the word about the campaign that educates thousands of children across the country about what life is like on the other side of the world. There is also a fundraising element that collects money for UNICEF’s Schools for Africa program, which builds schools in Rwanda and Malawi.

Dooley Communications is managing UNICEF’s public relations efforts for all of Manitoba and Saskatchewan. That includes arranging for regular media advisories, news releases and managing several events in Winnipeg, Saskatoon and Regina. In addition to our regular launch event, this year, we’re planning our first ever Celebrity Pumpkin Carving Contest late in the month at Kildonan Place.

We will also be hosting Walk for Water events on October 23 in all three cities where children will get a first hand sense of what is like to have to walk some distance for daily drinking water. It will be a learning experience for the kids and we hope it will generate some exposure for a very worthwhile campaign.

This is the second year that Dooley Communications has handled the public relations for UNICEF Canada’s Prairies Region. We’re proud to be associated with an organization so well known for its work around the world in helping children at risk. We handle media relations, give media training to speakers, manage events and provide general strategic direction for the local campaign.

Check it out - and donate today - at www.trickortreatforunicef.ca.