Some time ago, when attending the excellent Association of Bahá'í Women event, at the Rural College, in Draperstown, I must admit that I was (to use a North of England term, immortalised by Les Dawson) vexed, when I discovered that no press lead had been prepared. To set it out the situation concisely: Bahá'ís, generally, are very busy people and one person-with a little inspiration and the information to hand-can save communities' press officers time and lots of it, when it is all added-up! With a press lead, the individual press officers have no excuse for not making a submission. I don't know how many press releases will have resulted from the event in Draperstown! For me, the one to the Omagh newspapers took some time to write and get sorted out and would have been a lot easier if we'd had a pre-prepared one. We, the Bahá'ís of Northern Ireland have to try and develop a proclamation and publicity culture! One way of moving towards its achievement is by communities, that organise events, ensuring a press lead is made available-for visiting communities to take away with them-from each and every event. Follow-up press releases maximise the effect of Bahá'í events and I really don't understand why a press lead is not an integral part of the thinking of organisers. Finally, many of we Bahá'ís may be ordinary people, thrown into doing things for which we are not specifically trained. That, however, is no reason for us to behave amateurishly!
As the title of this article suggests, this is the third one that I have written, along these lines, in recent years. Weekly newspapers are read from cover-to-cover, each copy probably by several people. Further, the Irish diaspora is spread all-over the world. By putting articles into the local press-not only can your locality be affected-your item of news can be read by Irish people, receiving local newspapers and others, in places that you could not even dream of. Perhaps, in this day of e-mail and computers, the Northern Ireland Bahá'í Community should endeavour again to hold a "Press Officers' Seminar". The last one-proposed to be held in Dungannon, when the Sanders lived there-was cancelled for lack of participants!
Malcolm Lake
BACK TO CONTENTS PAGE