A press-officer friend asked for pointers on how he could help journalists cover the research institute he now works at better. My response follows, please reply with your inputs as well.

1. Avoid the traditional press release format and use something like Axios’s: https://www.axios.com/endangered-frog-puerto-rico-d5bfc541-c023-420e-b0fe-15d600c40b37.html Answer the key questions, nothing more. No self-respecting organisation is going to want to republish press releases. This way also saves you time.

2. Make scientists from within the institute, especially women, members of minority groups and postdocs, available for comment – whether on their own research or on work by others. This means keeping them available (at certain times if need be) and displaying their contact info.

3. If you’re going to publish blogs, it would be great if they’re on a CC BY or BY-SA (or even something a little more restrictive like CC BY NC ND) license so that interested news organisations can republish them. If you're using ND, please ensure the copy is clean.

4. Pictures are often an issue. If you could take some nice pics on your phone and post them on, say, the CC library on Flickr, that would be great. These can be pics of the institute, instruments, labs, important people, events, etc.

/ends