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The Allen ISD Public Information Office
manages communication on behalf of district administrators
and all 17 campuses. District staff, PTAs and student organizations may
submit news and photos for consideration in district
publications and to be forwarded to local news media
sources.
To request a news release or other
publicity, contact the public information office at
972.727.0510 or
publicinfo@allenisd.org. The following
information was compiled to assist you when requesting
publicity:
District Communications
What Makes a Story for Local News Media
Tips for Taking Photos
News Media Sources
Contacts
Submit a News Item
District Communications
What Makes a Story
for Local News Media
The following guidelines from the
booklet "How to Get Your News Into the Dallas Morning
News" may be helpful when submitting news items to the
public information office:
"A story is said to be newsworthy if it
possesses one or more of a set of fairly well-accepted
attributes; has impact on history or individuals; has
proximity to the audience; and is considered human
interest or involves recognizable people. Finally,
news is what interests us and in that sense, what
constitutes news is relative.
"When there is disagreement on the
news value of a story, the conflict generally is resolved
on the criterion of how interesting it will be to how many
people. Mary Doe's election to a school board is
extremely interesting to the Doe family, interesting to
most people in the district and not at all interesting to
people in another city. And although it would please
the Doe family and the school board to see the election
story on the front page of a metropolitan paper, the
paper's editors would be remiss to place it there, unless
something made the story particularly significant.
"Young Johnny Doe's making the high
school football team is not a 'story,' but his making the
team two years after he had a heart and lung transplant is
a story.
"Stories also are always in constant
competition for space. Johnny's story may be
entirely newsworthy, but if it was scheduled to run on a
day that an important breaking news event occurred, it
would be bumped if the big breaking event needed the
space."
—"How
to Get Your News Into the Dallas Morning News"
(emphasis added), ©
2003
Tips for Taking
Photos
- Resolution — **Many
digital cameras are not designed to take
high-quality photos. Most now list the
resolution (quality) of photos that can be taken
on the outside of the camera in terms of megapixels. Generally speaking, a higher
number of megapixels means a photo will be
higher quality. A camera with photo
quality of at least 2 megapixels will generally
take pictures that can be reproduced in printed
publications at a size of 3" x 5." Many
digital photos are not useable simply because
they are taken with a low-resolution camera (< 2
megapixels).
- Taking Photos
- Hold the
camera steady to reduce chance of blurring.
- Concentrate as closely as
possible on faces, action and emotions.
- Think, "What makes this
event unique and/or newsworthy?"
- If using a
digital camera with a preview feature, preview
your photos on the spot to ensure that correct
angles are being achieved and that light
sources are sufficient.
- Use a flash when appropriate.
- Remind students to
"ignore" the camera when taking action photos
to avoid posed results.
- E-mailing Digital
Photos - E-mail
your images as individual attachments, not
embedded in a Word or PowerPoint document, to
publicinfo@allenisd.org.
- Photo Captions
- In the body of your e-mail, include the photo
names with corresponding names and titles of
photo subjects (pictured left to right) and
information to be emphasized in the published
photo caption.
News Media
Sources
Media Contacts
Tim Carroll, APR
Public Information Director
972.727.0510
Justin R. Acker
Public Information Specialist
972.727.0510 |
