Social media, flyers (handbills), posters, email lists, websites, etc are all the ways you can try and get your message out to people. You need a good diversity of strategies.

Try and get your social media ‘handle’ consistent across the platforms so that it is easy for people to remember and tag you without having to look you up.

One time you might have been lucky and some media outlet picked up your cause/story and ran with it. Quite often this will inspire other media outlets to contact you and make it feel that it was easy. But most o the time, it is really tough to get the word out and mostly media (printed media, television, radio, etc), is not overly interested in giving you a free platform.

FYI – this “free media” coverage is called earned media. It can be very valuable to your movement. BUT don’t count on it. There could be a cat stuck up a tree that captures the attention of the media while your march of 1,500 citizens gathering doesn’t get any attention.

Some media outlets have event calendars… still.
Global TV Edmonton

The City of Edmonton also has an event listing platform
Events Calendar

Media

Media has changed quite a lot over the past several decades. It has shifted to the political right because those are the people and corporations that bought up the newspapers, radio stations, and TV stations. They bought the soap boxes.

This has happened around the world.

Edmonton has two main newspapers – the Edmonton Journal and the Edmonton Sun These are both owned by the same owner – Postmedia. They have laid off several journalists over the decades and much has been centralized. They run many stories from elsewhere and I just noticed that the EJ no longer offers their ‘What’s On’ community event page.

Years ago, media outlets would accept PSAs (Public Service Announcements) but that doesn’t happen very much anymore.

Here is a listing of media outlets in Edmonton complete with emails/faxes so that you can send them information about your event/cause. Over time you will learn the names and contacts of journalists/reporters that you can deal with directly. You can see an overview of all the different outlets on this Wikipedia page.

Caveat – this information is provided in goodwill. Every effort was made to ensure that the information present was correct but mistakes do happen. If you find an error, please let us know so it can be corrected.

Media at Events

If media does show up at your event, ensure that you have a media spokesperson readily available. You want to have your message ready and it to be in great soundbites. They want a product to present to their audience and if you are good – give it to them in a form that is as well packaged as possible so that they are not tempted to edit it.

Media, the friendly journalist standing in front of you, may not be your friend. They are interested in getting information but if their outlet is a Conservative media group, they will try and get you to say silly things. What you say reflects on the whole movement. Being the spokesperson seems glamorous but it it one of the most difficult jobs since you can’t really be yourself because you are representing your organization, your movement, and every last person that showed up to support the cause/movement. Don’t let them down.

You see politicians that hold very tightly to their ‘talking points’ without saying anything of consequence. A good spokesperson knows what they want to convey to the journalist and stays on the subject. Of course, it would be great to be better than the very low bar that these politicians have set. Media should not waste its time with these automatons.