Monday, February 18, 2008

Some welcome publicity for CVGS

Every genealogy society hopes to get publicity in local newspapers once in awhile. The Chula Vista Genealogical Society, of which I am currently President, sends notices of society programs to the daily San Diego Union-Tribune newspaper each month for a Calendar section, requesting it be published the weekend before our monthly program.

I sent the notice on Sunday, 10 February, and received a phone call from David Berlin, a reporter, on Monday. David writes in the "Our South County" section that appears three times each week in the area south of Highway 94 in San Diego. He asked me some questions about CVGS and our speaker on 27 February, and asked if I had a phone number for the speaker. I gave it to him. Then he asked if I would be willing to do a phone interview with him, and we set up Wednesday at 10 a.m. for the interview.

On Wednesday, he called and we talked for about 30 minutes. He asked some specific questions and essentially let me ramble on.

David wrote an article about our 27 February speaker and CVGS, with one of her family pictures, that appeared on Page 1 of the "Our South County" section on Thursday, 14 February. The text is transcribed here.

David also wrote a Question and Answer article about me and CVGS, with a head shot picture, that appeared on Saturday, 16 February, on Page 1 of the "Our South County" section. The text is transcribed here.

You will note that he got my name wrong in the latter article (Richard Seaver is printed) - but I just tell people that it's my evil twin brother who was interviewed (that way if I said something wrong in the interview, it won't be attributable to me).

Any publicity is good for CVGS, and I'm grateful to David Berlin for taking the time to contact me and write these two articles. I've already had three phone calls from people interested in attending our program, and several people at church told me their "family stories" at church on Sunday.

1 comment:

Kathryn Doyle said...

Randy,

I can't lie. I have a severe case of newspaper-publicity-envy. Thanks for sharing this success. I need to do a better job (read: regular, monthly) of notifying the Bay Area papers of the California Genealogical Society meetings and events for their calendars. Great tip!