Making an Open Source Project Press-Friendly 169
blackbearnh writes "Corporations know that part of launching a successful project is projecting the right image to the media. But a lot of open source projects seem to treat the press as an annoyance, if they think about it at all. For a reporter, even finding someone on a project who's willing to talk about it can be a challenge. Esther Schindler over at IT World has a summary of a roundtable discussion that was held at OSCON with pointers about how open source projects can be more reporter-accessible. 'Recognize that we are on deadline, which for most news journalists means posting the article within a couple of hours and for feature authors within a couple of days. If we ask for input, or a quote, or anything to which your project spokesperson (you do have one? yes? please say yes) might want to respond, it generally does mean, "Drop everything and answer us now." If the journalist doesn't give you a deadline ("I need to know by 2pm"), it's okay to ask how long you can take to reach the right developer in Poland, but err on the side of "emergency response." It's unreasonable, I know, but so are our deadlines.'"
Reporters Need A Story (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Reporters aren't the only one with deadlines (Score:3, Informative)
The lesson here is plan ahead. As soon as you know you're going to be working on a story, start asking for comments. If you wait until the last second, you're likely to not get a reply. Yes, reporters can get short deadlines, but you can't expect volunteers contributing their spare time to jump at your say-so, and you have to allow time to get the corporate wheels rolling in the latter case.
A lot of reporters aren't given the luxury of oodles of extra time by their assigning editors and those editors expect results, not requests for more time because "they have to get the corporate wheels rolling over there." The reporter might have hours from the time it's assigned to the deadline for turning it in ... and to some people outside of and ignorant of the writing/editing/publishing process, that short amount of time can be misinterpreted as "waiting until the last second." It's not. It's the nature of the beast.
Re:Reporters aren't the only one with deadlines (Score:3, Informative)
If you want information fast then ask the people that stand to benefit from the article, you will be much more likely to get a quick response. If you think you can contact a random developer or coder and get a response fast you are batshit crazy. Developers have enough to do and the last thing they are worried about is making sure some reporter is going to meet a insanely short deadline when they don't get any direct benefit. The reality is that reporters should not expect anyone to bend over for them. Warn the parties you want information from in advance or suffer the consequences. If you aren't given warning then that is still your problem, don't try and push it on someone else other than those who gave the short deadline. The article is a reflection of the reporter and thus it is no one else is responsible to ensure its quality.
Re:Reporters aren't the only one with deadlines (Score:4, Informative)
There'll be a graf that says "Representatives of (ORGANIZATION NAME) did not return a request for comment" or a phrase to that effect. The effort to make contact was made; for reasons out of my control, it was not successful. My editor gave me a set amount of time; the sand in the hourglass ran out. There's nothing I can do about that. And there's a lot less of that time in the 24/7 online news cycle than there was in the printed media news cycle when the presses rolled at midnight.
If you want me to have fuller information, please answer my phone call or e-mail. Or, as suggested elsewhere, if you don't have time then designate somebody as your press representative and tell him/her to return my phone call when it comes ... and also tell him/her to register with Peter Shankman's Help A Reporter Out [helpareporter.com] initiative. Or, as suggested in Ms. Schindler's IT World article, create a /press page or section on your Web site like the big companies do. There you should have information about what your project is about, why you think it matters, its current status, who to contact for more information, screen shots (please remember that print media require high-resolution versions of screen shots or other images for the printing press), press releases and other mentions in the media. (That's not the same as an FAQ and I won't quote an FAQ. I want to hear from the people behind the project what they're doing and why they're doing it. People make news stories interesting. There's a human angle to everything.)
Use plain language, not jargon. If you translate that page into a foreign language, have someone fluent in the language (preferably it's his/her native language) double-check your work. If it's a bad translation, it reflects badly on you. I've lost count of how many foreign businesses have an English press kit that reads as though a fourth-grader wrote it up and I have no doubt that many businesses from English-speaking countries have non-English press material that is equally poorly translated.
Ms. Schindler's Care and Feeding of the Press [netpress.org] is excellent. Everyone trying to get press coverage should read it -- hell, I've dealt with public/media relations professionals who could learn a lot about doing their jobs from reading that -- and a lot of people who don't currently think they need press coverage might want to take a look at that, too. In many cases, the information that reporters are looking for is precisely the same information developers and end users are looking for.
Ms. Schindler makes a solid point on the second page: "(Y)ou've gone deep with your project, and I haven't. I may not be familiar with the problem that it aims to solve. So tell me about it."
As a tech writer here's what we want: (Score:4, Informative)
1) Have a sane contact us page. Seriously. Not some web form with a pull down menu to select what this inquiry is related to. But an actual list of functions and associated contact data (email minimally, phone is more corporate and I wouldn't expect that of an open source project). Why email? So I have a record of what I sent, otherwise I have random emails showing up from half remembered projects/vendors. If you make it hard for me to contact you I won't. For many projects that are small having the head guys email address listed works well too.
2) Have a press@ email address, much like abuse@, security@, etc. this is a pretty sane default and leaves very little question as to whom to send email when you're looking for a press contact. It can be a redirect, I don't mind emailing press@ and getting a response from someguy@, if he quotes the subject line I won't have any trouble figuring it out. If you make it hard for me to contact you I won't. It bears repeating.
3) (to the mental image of a sweaty Steve Ballmer acting like a deranged gorilla) "Deadlines, Deadlines, Deadlines!". If it's a press article for a newspaper the author is lucky if they have 2-3 hours to research this time and get it in. You may want to consider having press@ be an alias to multiple people in different timezones. The quicker you respond the less likely I am to write you out of my article or downplay your role.
4) Don't treat me like a sales prospect or try to sell me stuff I'm not buying, I've got a deadline to meet. Be upfront and honest, most reporters/writers can smell bullshit a mile away (or at least they should be able to, I would say bullshit detection is a core competency for writers/reporters). Perfect example: interesting network traffic analysis product, I contact the vendor, they say it's Windows only I say thanks and move on (article is for Linux Magazine Pro). They don't get any press coverage, but they do get remembered for not wasting my time. The next time I'm writing about network traffic analysis on Windows I'll contact them first since I know they play well with others. Reporters/writers have long memories (we keep notes); if you jerk us around we will never, ever, ever write anything positive about you. Ever.
5) Don't be afraid to go beyond answering our questions a bit, if I was a complete expert in the topic I'm asking you about I wouldnâ(TM)t be emailing you now would I? Interesting back stories, info, related data, this is all golden ("What do you mean you're the only vendor that has a syscall proxy? What the heck is a syscall proxy? Oh.. Oh wow.").
6) I love love love covering projects that make cool/useful/nifty/clever software, especially if "staffed" (for lack of a better term to cover commercial and Open Source) by helpful people who are willing to spend 10 minutes helping me and educating me. You make my life easier, I will appreciate it for a very long time. Social capital is valuable, earning it isn't hard.
Re:It's not an emergency (Score:2, Informative)
Sadly, I suspect *you* haven't got it -- HE doesn't want anything from you, right? YOU want publicity from him. At least, that's the way its supposed to work if you want to create high-volume software.
As a former journalist, and currently in the IT field, I know both sides of the fence. If you don't want publicity, when he calls, just say so! If you do... well back in my day (1986-ish) the deadlines came up every hour. I was expected to do four to six stories a day.
I'm not going to get me fired by telling my Editor his deadlines don't suit your open-source project. I will just grab the latest Microsoft press release off the spike and top and tail it to fill the space available.
You can change this. I can't :-)