Jonathan Williams

Last week, a little more than a dozen community members representing diverse organizations gathered in the Flag room at the Astoria Library to discuss with editors the best ways to get their news in the The Astorian and Coast Weekend.

It was a heartening discussion.

It was wonderful to see so many community members come in with great questions and feedback.

If you weren’t able to attend this event, here is a condensed recap of what we discussed and what I’d like moving forward.

It is best to send any press releases for events you’d like to have considered to be ran as a news brief or feature story in Coast Weekend a month ahead of time. For possible feature stories, explain what makes your event noteworthy and different.

Please send all press releases and story pitches to jwilliams@dailyastorian.com. You can also fill out the “Send Us Your News” form on Coast Weekend’s website, coastweekend.com.

Coast Weekend does accept press releases through Tuesday the week before publication but cannot guarantee that your event will be in the following week’s Coast Weekend if it comes to us after that.

In press releases, please tell us about your event, who to contact with an email and phone number and any photos to possibly include with the story.

Coast Weekend does not reprint press releases verbatim. We write short 200-300 word news briefs about events using the information gleaned from press releases sent in.

You can also submit photos to Coast Weekend after your event that we may publish in the print issue or use as a file photo for your event.

Coast Weekend also has the ever-popular Music Happenings and See + Do calendars that list local events. The deadline to submit your event listing for those calendars is also Tuesday, one week and two days before publication.

Because of the number of events happening on North Coast and Long Beach Peninsula, we aren’t always able to list every event, especially if it is a recurring event. You can always find all the event listings we have in the “Events” tab under the “Area Guide” on Coast Weekend’s homepage.

Additionally, if your organization has a website or social media page, please update this as often as possible if anything changes in your organization such as who to contact, who is in charge, where you are located and any other information that might be used for a story.

We do look at organization’s websites and social media pages for information and don’t want to print anything that isn’t correct or up-to-date.

Coast Weekend will be doing a redesign in August. I am excited for the coming changes and will be explaining more about that soon.

My goal is to accurately reflect the news and events happening in the Columbia-Pacific region in Coast Weekend’s pages.

Please help me in this effort by sending in your news as soon as possible. If you have any questions, you can email me at jwilliams@dailyastorian.com or call 971-704-1720.