Sharing Content

Discuss your story idea with your faculty/department communicator or directly with SFU Communications & Marketing. Stories we pitch to the media are regularly picked up by the CBC, Global News, CTV, Vancouver Sun and other Canadian and international news outlets.

The most successful news pitches address some or all of these criteria:

1. Impact
   What is the everyday impact of your research/story for regular people? How easy is it to communicate what your research means? What issue does it address? Is there a call-to-action to affect change?
2. Human interest/news you can use
   Sharing lived experience or having a ‘news you can use’ element, like suggestions on how to stay cool during a heat wave or what cities/governments can do to mitigate risks, makes stories more attractive to mainstream media.
3. Timeliness/urgency
   Is it new research timed to coincide with the publication date of a peer-reviewed journal or launch of a project? Media interest is highest at that time, so it’s best to work with us in advance of publication to maximize our reach. Can your research be tied to major current events? What can you add to the public conversation?
4. Curiosity/novelty
   How unusual, different or weird is this story? Does it reveal something new and/or surprising, or challenge conventional thinking?
5. Money (funding)
   How much money is involved? Media are more likely to cover stories about funding in the millions, rather than thousands, of dollars.
6. Expert availability
   Reporters following up on a media release expect same-day access to the expert.

If your new research has international significance, it will also be posted by our office to EurekAlert!, a leading science news release platform, operated by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).