Media list for press releases and announcements
Open, Needs TriagePublic

Description

It's important to have a media list of professional journalists if KDE wants to see more exposure beyond the Linux blogosphere.

The idea is to draw from this list when we have a new press release, and pitch the story to relevant contacts on the list. Not all contacts will be relevant for every release.

These contacts will ideally be people at general tech publications who cover primarily Linux, FOSS, or other topics relevant to KDE e.V.

Please submit new contacts here, with as much of the following information as possible:

Name, outlet they work for, email, job title at their publication, KDE products or activities they would be interested in, Twitter, phone number.

While Linux-specific outlets, bloggers, Youtubers, etc. are also important, I think they should be kept in a separate list.

I jotted down three contacts I think would be a good start. Right now it's an .ODS, but we can move this list to a more readily shareable platform as it develops.

dcahal created this task.Feb 8 2018, 7:35 AM
dcahal updated the task description. (Show Details)Feb 8 2018, 7:41 AM
duffus added a subscriber: duffus.Feb 8 2018, 9:43 AM

Isn't there already a press contacts mailing list? We certainly used to have one that non run of the mill announcements could get sent to

There was one, but it doesn't seem to have been used lately. It would be great if anybody could dig it up. Update the information so it's current, remove people who aren't on the Linux beat anymore, and polish it up with a few new faces. It would certainly make things easier.

skadinna added subscribers: sebas, skadinna.EditedFeb 8 2018, 10:14 AM

There's the kde-press-announce mailing list, @sebas can tell you more about that, or you can read about it here: https://community.kde.org/Promo/Guidance/PressResources
I'm not sure it's OK to publicly share the contents of that list, though.

EDIT:
We also had a list of contacts in different distros, but that's probably severely outdated: https://community.kde.org/Promo/Distribution_Communication/Tasks

Might be worth reviving - something to think about.

If the press channel and its member list is actively maintained, some of those people might make good additions to a Promo media list. The purpose seems very different from what I was hoping for, however. The press channel looks like a listserv that sends a weekly digest to all members. The address "kde-ev-marketing" also makes me wonder about the focus of its coverage. Hopefully someone involved can shed more light on its current status.

As far as distro contacts, I feel like a Plasma developer might be more appropriate for that role. Someone who can coordinate the details of technical issues. Now, if we're talking about distros that don't currently offer a KDE spin, that might be a job for Promo.

In T7923#127175, @davidc wrote:

As far as distro contacts, I feel like a Plasma developer might be more appropriate for that role. Someone who can coordinate the details of technical issues. Now, if we're talking about distros that don't currently offer a KDE spin, that might be a job for Promo.

The developers are busy as it is - I don't think we should add even more stuff onto their plate. Besides, this distro contact effort doesn't seem to have been related to any technical tasks...the table on the wiki literally says "Distros to contact about branding".

But yeah, I agree it would be best if we could get more details on this from seasoned contributors.

We have at least two points of contacts with distributions: the mailing lists distributions@ and kde-distro-packagers@ (and maybe the latter should be closed at some point, there was a plan but I lost track; anyway, it's a different discussion).

If the point of this ticket is (as it seems to be) the *press* contact, isn't it a matter of refreshing the press contact information that are printed in each release announcement (see "Press Contacts" for example on https://www.kde.org/announcements/kde-frameworks-5.42.0.php ), as it was already pointed out. Distro contact is a different story.

Regarding the developers, I don't think it makes sense to have a specific developer, but the promo team can always ask the developer of the project which is in the announcement. A developer of a certain project may not likely help with all projects.

lydia added a subscriber: lydia.Feb 9 2018, 10:56 AM

Yes we have the press announce list. Let's use it. If people are missing on it let's add them.
We should try to avoid duplicating things because it just leads to two places being unmaintained usually.

I've got an addition to the press contacts list: Joey Sneddon of OMGUbuntu. He recently expressed a willingness to cover KDE-related news as long as we contact him about it: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/03/gnome-3-30-release-date#comment-3824892081

devajashah added a subscriber: devajashah.

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