SC Media Update for October!

New Organizer Media Orientation - Friday October 14, at 2pm ET/1pm CT/12pm MT/11am PT
This phone/webinar training is highly recommended for all newly-hired field organizers and chapter/state/regional campaign staff, to orient you to the communications resources available at the national Sierra Club and the benefits to integrating media work into field plans. Secrets of the Communications Department, revealed… only in this training!  Please RSVP to [email protected]

NEW! Message Box Training - Thursday, October 20, at 2pm ET/1pm CT/12pm MT/11am PT
Have you seen the Sierra Club's new message boxes on Clubhouse or email listservs?  Message boxes are a new tool that the Sierra Club is using to define strategic message points in a way that make us more nimble, succinct and able to respond to reporters' questions.  The media team has developed a new phone conference/webinar training to teach Sierra Club communicators how message boxes are structured, how they're used, and to give us an opportunity to practice our skills using message boxes to calmly answer reporters' questions with our most persuasive points!  RSVP for the training to: [email protected]

Pitch Training Tuesday October 26, at 3pm ET/2pm CT/1pm MT/12pm PT
The highlight of this popular training is valuable practice time to hone our skills at “pitching” the Sierra Club story to the news media – a crucial building-block skill to help us spread our message, influence public opinion, and persuade policymakers!  Please RSVP for the training to [email protected]

Tune-Up Your Media Skills with New Trainings This Fall!

Are you rarin' to go for a radio interview?  Curious about cyberspace?  Not sure how to get into the news cycle?

The Sierra Club Media Team offers trainings to staff, chapter staff, and activists to develop skills on using the media as an organizing and communication tool.  These trainings are offered on a regular basis, as phone conference calls/PowerPoint presentations.  If you're ready for a tune-up of your skills, check out the trainings that have been scheduled for this Fall:

> Pitch training!

Wednesday, October 27, 2010 -- 3pm ET/2pm CT/1pm MT/12pm PT

Unrelated to baseball, sorry Giants fans!  But this training will help you learn to effectively “pitch” the Sierra Club story to the news media – a crucial building-block skill to help us spread our message, influence public opinion, and persuade policymakers.  Please RSVP for the training to [email protected].

> New Organizer Media Orientation

First Friday of each month, next training will be Friday, November 5, 2010 -- 2pm ET/1pm CT/12pm MT/11am PT

This training is recommended for all new field staff (hired since January 1, 2010), and those who want a refresher. The training orients field organizers to the communications resources available to them, and benefits to integrating media work into field plans. Please RSVP to [email protected].

> Blog Trainings

Coming Soon - Novemeber 2010

Keep your eyes peeled for a brand new 2-part training series, “Intro to Blogs” and “How to Use Blogs,” that is being developed jointly by the Media Team and the Online Organizing Dept.

New coal ash images now in VIA Library

The first of seven EPA coal ash hearings around the country have begun. We have almost 100 new coal ash photos available if you need them. Click on the VIA Library Collection link, log in, and search for COAL ASH. For more info visit http://www.sierraclub.org/coalash or contact [email protected]

 

Need Photos of our New Executive Director?

Now that the Club has selected Michael Brune as its 6th executive director, VIA Library has posted some images of him that are available for web and print use. Just the thing for your chapter's next newsletter  or web page. If you've never accessed the Library and its treasure trove of video, images, and audio visit:

http://clubhouse.sierraclub.org/communications/photos/default.aspx

2009 Awards Banquet Photos Available

We have made available in the VIA Library, a series of photographs taken last month at the Awards Banquet held in San Francisco. You can view them by visiting the Library - in Clubhouse by going to the Communications tab, and clicking on the Photos link that takes you to the Photos homepage. There you'll find a link to the VIA Library Collection. Follow that link to enter the Library, then in the search field type Awards-2009. You should now be able to view all the images from this year's presentation. If you find any misidentified people or incorrect captions let us know by email at [email protected]. Also feel free to download and use any images for your Sierra Club business.

A Colby Library Digitizing Project Bears its First Fruit

Tucked away in the Sierra Club’s Colby Library vault are shelves full of 16-mm film canisters that tell a story, or rather, many stories.  They are stories from Sierra Club’s past, of Club efforts in some of the pivotal battles of U.S. environmental history.

 

From 1954 through 1979, Sierra Club created more than twenty short films on a variety of topics, many of them to accompany active environmental campaigns.  The 16-mm format, common at the time, has become obsolete and no longer viewable without special equipment.  However, interest in these early Club films has never completely faded.  Colby Library is regularly contacted by modern documentary filmmakers hoping to access some of that old footage.  The 16-mm format made it inconvenient to respond to these requests; though footage has been provided for many small films and some memorable ones, such as, Cadillac Desert, Monumental, and Ken Burns’ The National Parks: America’s Best Idea.

 

Now, through the support of our generous donors, Jim and Sue Higman, the Library’s long-held hope of preserving these films in digital format is being realized.  We have begun, one film at a time, to create digital masters and DVD copies, which will both preserve these historic films and make it possible to easily view them.  Making use of both film prints and film elements, that is, original image and sound track reels used in the creation of the films, we have been able to produce digital masters close to the quality and color of the original films—an improvement on the scratched and faded 16-mm prints we were limited to until now.  To date, four films have been digitized.  We expect this project to continue over several years, preserving more than twenty Club films, as well as a variety of other 16-mm footage in the Library’s collection. 

 

Possible new uses for these archival films are being considered and will vary based on each film’s individual subject matter and usage rights.  Meanwhile, a DVD copy of each digitized film will be available to borrow from the Colby Library.

The four films now converted include:

• Wilderness River Trail (1954)
  This film supports the Club’s campaign to protect Dinosaur National Monument from proposed dam building.
  
• A Canyon Voyage  (1957)
  A party sets out at Green River, Wyoming, to duplicate the path of John Wesley Powell’s historic Colorado River exploration.
  
• Grand Canyon (1967)
  Motivated by threats to the Canyon, this film shows “how a living river is vital to keeping a canyon alive.”
  
• Two Yosemites  (1955, reissued in 1967)
  A passionate portrayal of the beauty of Yosemite Valley is contrasted with the muddy rocks and blowing dust of the low-water Hetch Hetchy Reservoir.

For more information contact Ellen Byrne in the Colby Library.

Need a Photo?

Have you heard of the VIA Library? It "lives" in Clubhouse and it stands for Video, Images, and Audio.

Mostly it's photographs.

You know how they say that a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, with more than 2,000 images, we've got the enough words for a Harry Potter novel.
All those images are available to you for any Sierra Club purpose -- a newsletter, a factsheet, a PowerPoint presentation, a web page or email, a postcard.

We're writing for three reasons:

• to promote VIA and encourage you to take a look at what's there. (You can start viewing a slide show by clicking here)
• to ask you what kinds of images you might need in your work that we don't have. (We know, for example, that we have only a few photos related to recycling or composting or solid waste.) Please take a minute to fill out our four question survey - click here.
• to ask you if you have photos you might consider contributing to VIA Library.

All the images in VIA have appropriate permissions from the photographer, and where necessary, from any of the subjects in the photo. It's easy to find photos these days on the web, but unless you have permission from the photographer, you can't just take those images and use them in your newsletter. That's why we created the VIA Library, to help you tell your story with compelling images, and to follow all copyright laws.

(We have a small number of video and audio files too, and expect to have more down the road.)

Need a Sierra Club business card?

Go here and download this PDF. If you have any questions contact me.

Not Always a Pretty Picture

Wanna talk trash? You might want to use an audio clip from Elizabeth Royte, author of the book "Garbage Land," on the hidden world of garbage. Or get a little more graphic with a picture of waste like this one from Memphis, Tennessee showing how single items can add up to a tide of ugly, toxic debris. (Photographer Karen Soro took this shot after the spring floods receded from the presitigious neighborhood of Harbor Town.)

We have more trash pictures and audio, too, in VIA Library. Log in and type the word "trash" in the search box above the thumbnails and you'll get resources to illustrate how important zero waste initiatives can be.

If you have photos you would like to donate, travel on over to our submissions page, or drop us a line.

[Photo by Karen Soro]

Inspiration in Pictures

Do you need some images of activists to fire up your Sierra Club presentations, weblogs or publications? Try VIA Library for photos of people speaking, writing letters, signing petitions, carrying signs and more. You can use these images for Sierra Club communications for free as long as you credit the photographers who have generously donated their work.

This photo of a letter writer at one of the Sierra Club's Lightbulbs to Leadership houseparties is by Shelby Thorner.

Once you have logged into VIA Library, you can simply type "Activists" in the search box above the thumbnails and voila!

We want to grow this area of the collection, so if you have photos of your own to donate, contact us or check our submissions page for details.