Writing Your Press Release – How tos for publicity
Great publicity is absolutely vital to gallery and individual artist success. What is included? All of the five basic elements of good journalism are needed to tell the complete story. The order in which the elements appear may vary.
Who
What
When
Where
Why (Background info.)
Format: All this information needs to be written in strict paragraph form, with corrected spelling, good sentence structure and grammar in order to be publishable in newspapers and on the gallery web site. Please do not use bullet points or numbered lists of topics. We use Microsoft Word to help create .docx format text files because of that program’s ability to point out grammar and spelling errors.
Examples:
Who – the full name of Klamath Art Gallery, the artist(s) full name or the event name/theme appear in the first paragraph. In other paragraphs, just the artist’s last name is used or the personal pronoun of choice. The first name is usually not used again.
What – tells what the exhibit or event is going to be about, the media the work was created with, and what visitors can expect to see or have happen.
When – Include the starting date and ending date, the gallery days and hours of operation. (*See below.) Any extra special events such as an artist’s talk or reception should also have the date, time and place included. (When we can safely resume those again.)
Where: the address and location of the event. (*See below.)
Why – Why are we having the event? Why has the artist been inspired to create the type of work they are showing? Under background information it is a good idea to list important workshops, schools, and special training the artist has had.
* The standard ending paragraph below that covers some of the above information to insure some consistency
The Klamath Art Gallery is located in historic Maple Park at 120 Riverside Drive, at the south end of the Link River “birding trail.” Regular gallery hours of operation are Thursdays through Sundays, noon to 4 PM. We are closed the last week of each month (Monday through Saturday) for exhibit change outs. For additional information about the Klamath Art Association and Gallery you can phone us at 541-883-1833 during open hours, visit our website at http://klamathartassociation.org or E-mail us at klamathartassoc@aol.com.
If you feel you need help with your press release, just send in your information containing the “who, what, where, when and why” and we will refine it for you as needed.
A Caution – it is wise not to include too much personal information in the newspaper or on the web site these days.
The gallery reserves the right to edit all publicity…after all we want to make the artist(s) and the gallery look their best!!!
Public Service Announcements (PSA’s) are short form versions of the above information, edited down to fit the space limits of the places and organizations that we send information to. Our publicity person does these.