Beachcombing – News Releases

After 25 years of publishing a newspaper – following 25 years of writing corporate news releases – I can confirm why we did not run the item that you recently sent to the Beachcomber. Following are the top ten reasons your “news” will not get used.

Missed Deadline – All submissions must be received one week prior to each issue date. We are bi-weekly, meaning items in today’s paper should have been sent to editor@beachcomber.news by Oct. 24. You will find a complete calendar of our publish dates at our website: https://beachcomber.news/content/beachcomber-publish-dates-2024-2026. On Monday and Tuesday of each publishing week, all editorial content is reviewed, edited and worked into the page layout.

Wrong Format – We frequently receive fliers instead of news releases. Fliers make great advertisements but do not qualify for editorial purposes. A news release is a document that contains sentences and paragraphs written in a style just like what you see on page two of this issue. It is submitted to us as text, either in the body of an email and/or as a separate Microsoft Word attachment.

Missing Information – Your news release must answer the following questions: What, Who, When, Where, Why and How?

Not Local – We are a Long Beach publication, primarily focusing on news that pertains to readers in Long Beach or continuous communities. If the item impacts our readers, it may be on the county, state or national level.

Not News – In addition to being local, news must be timely, impactful, unique, dramatic or involve well-known persons or celebrities. The top question we ask is “who cares”?

Poorly Written – The most important information should be at the top with the less important at the bottom, making it easier to delete. It should be written objectively in the third person; avoid I, my, we, our, etc. Items submitted in outline format or as bullet points will be trashed. Quotations used excessively will be trashed.

No Photo Caption – Photographs with their captions are submitted as attachments. The preferred format is JPEG, CMYK, between 100KB and 1MB. Identify people in the photo from left to right.

No Contact Info – News releases must include a website and/or phone number to call for more details.

Uses Hyperlinks – Newspaper readers will not be able to click on your hyperlinks because we don’t use them. Use URLs on a limited basis.

Text Formatting – NO ALL CAPS, no tabs, no underlines, no italics, no color, no bolding and no exclamation marks! These must be handled separately in editing or in our page layout program.

If you follow these guidelines your news release will be given greater consideration and – most probably – will appear on these pages.

Funny stuff:

• A boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat.
• He had a photographic memory that was never developed.
• A midget fortune-teller who escapes from prison is a small medium at large.
• Once you’ve seen one shopping center, you’ve seen a mall.
• Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead-to-know basis.
• Santa’s helpers are subordinate clauses.
• Acupuncture is a jab well done.

publisher@beachcomber.news