The other day I spent a frustrating hour-plus (shudder) tracking down
the postal/mailing/snail mail addresses for contacts in connection with
my work for Discover magazine. (I nominated technological innovations
for the annual awards feature.)
Nearly every press release I obtained via computer failed to provide an
address for the press contact. Phone number and e-mail address only was
the norm. I had to have postal information, because the editors use the
mail to send out official entry forms.
Some of you work at institutions with names that do not communicate what state or city you’re in. I suppose I should know, I do know what city Harvard is in, but I wonder how many people outside of the East know what city Hofstra University (my husband’s workplace) is in.
Even if I don’t have a specific need to know, I still rather like to know where you are on our planet. It gives me a sense of connection to your institution—reminds me of the car trip I took through your state one summer, the deep-fried crawdads, the pastel-colored houses with cacti in the front yards. Also tells me what time zone you’re in. Very helpful.
When I called your contact number, of course I got your voice mail. At one college yesterday, I was bounced from voice mail box to voice mail box until I finally got an automated message to the effect that this was the end of the line. I never did get to a human being that way.
So I am asking all who write press releases to please make sure that your postal address is given, along with your telephone number, and also, please, your fax number, when your releases are posted or sent out electronically. What only takes you 10 seconds to type can take me 10 minutes to find out.
Remember that a lovely graphical letterhead (.gif or whatever) does *not* copy along with the release when I download the release from Eurekalert or your web site.
There used to be a quaint standard in journalism called “5 W’s and an H.” I have always liked this idea, and hope we could consider its revival in the press release.
Thanks in advance,
Karla Harby
Rockville Centre, Long Island, New York
Postscript
Could you also mention that the same organizations should strive to include
such basic information on their web sites as well? In looking for an address
(never mind a contact or phone number), I can often search through numerous
pages of a web site to no avail.
Cathy Dold
Boulder, CO
(Both of the above were downloaded from nasw-talk.)
Here in the wilds of Ireland, I only receive ScienceWriters by surface mail about two months after everyone else in the world has received it. I am somewhat belatedly registering my sad feelings as to the demise of Alton Blakeslee. I have many pleasant memories of his warmth, humility and intelligence, beginning back in the sixties when I worked for the American Chemical Society News Service under the tutelage of Jim Stack, who had a lot to do with the founding of this organization. I remember particularly one encounter at the end of a memorable evening of cocktail party, dinner, and subsequent poker fest at an ACS meeting in Atlantic City. That was in the days when it was a mark of the trade to drink real stuff and not the Perrier water, etc., that modern science writers seem to favor. Alton had finished a story in spite of all that and had asked me, in that most unassuming fashion, if the story “looked all right.” Of course it did, and I was honored that he asked the opinion of someone who at the time was nothing but a cub. Another memory: When I was working as science writer at the Salk Institute, I remember a conversation that Alton had with Jonas Salk, in which he (Alton) suggested to Jonas that the human race appeared to be a virus, which was enveloping, contaminating, destroying all that was good and pristine on the face of the Earth. Salk agreed, and he was certainly well aware of what viruses could do. The two events, in my mind, underscored two sides of Alton, his self-effacing niceness and his dead seriousness and concern about important issues.
John Henahan
Dublin, Ireland