Media Alert and Media Advisory
Read for Sept. 4, 2024: A news release, as we’ve already discussed, allows you to announce something or react to something in a public way through content that you hope the media utilizes. A news release is thus a public document that you want to have published. A “media alert” or “media advisory” is similar, in that it is a way for you to get media attention. But instead of writing a news story or feature story that you hope gets used by the media, an advisory or alert (they are equivalent terms) is a heads up to the media outlets that you circulate it to. It usually tells them that you’re doing something that is deserving of their coverage, although in can be used for other purposes, such as introducing a source at your organization who is a willing expert that media can contact and interview. In effect, the common alert means that you’re formally asking for media coverage of an upcoming newsworthy event. Thus, like a news release, a media alert (I have seen the term “alert” mo...