Editorials are small news articles that can be published in newspapers, magazines and news websites. Editorials are a great way to get free advertising for your study. However, poorly written editorials may be rejected by the editors and may never reach your audience.
Format
Formatting should generally follow that of a normal letter. Towards the top of the article you need to state: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE. This tells the editor that they do not need to wait for a specified date and that they can publish it now. You will also include the title of the article in capital letters. It is good practice to use START and END markers.
Content
It's crucial that the content of your editorial is appropriate and attractive to the editor. To be attractive to the editor it must:
• Be a story and not an advertisement
• Be informative and tell readers something they didn't already know
• Be free of hype
It is unlikely that editors will be interested in your recruitment, but they may be interested in some of the evidence in your area of research, so have the editorial focus on this point, rather than on your recruitment.
Example
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
START
EXERCISE IS BENEFICIAL FOR DEPRESSION: BUT HOW MUCH EXERCISE IS NEEDED?
It is estimated that everyone, either directly or indirectly, will be affected by depression at some stage in their life. Children and teens may be the most likely to experience depression, and women may be twice as likely as men to experience depression. Over the past two decades scientists have been confirming a link between a lack of exercise and the incidence of depression, and a growing amount of research is finding that exercise may be at least as effective as antidepressant medications, but it is not yet know how much exercise is best, or if it affects men and women differently.
Although most of us understand that exercise is beneficial, many of us are reluctant to start exercising, particularly if we are feeling depressed, when we don't know how much exercise we really should be doing.
Wellington researchers have recently started looking at exactly how much exercise is required to receive these benefits. "We know that vigorous exercise provides great benefits when done for 20 minutes, three or more times a week, but what about walking five times a week?" Asks John Smith, Masters student at Victoria University. "Depressed people are much more likely to walk than they are to run, so perhaps this is what we should be recommending - this is what our research is looking to find out".
For the research to be successful, John Smith and his team will require at least 100 volunteers to participate in the 12-week exercise programme. "We are inviting people who have been diagnosed with depression and who are not currently exercising to join the study" Smith said. Recruitment for this study is expected to complete at the end of the year. For more information, or to apply for this study, please click here, or go to www.getparticipants.com and search for "Depression Study".
END
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