Thank you for your interest in helping SafeLawns spread the word about organic lawn care and the benefits it has for kids, pets and the environment! This page was created to give you a central place to look for the materials we have prepared to help you in your advocacy for the healthy organic life.

Included are ready-to-print logos in various sizes appropriate for flyers, cards, labels and stickers, as well as larger graphics for banners, flags and posters.

You’ll also find mini-guides on how to get the message out: how to deal with the media, elected officials and your friends and neighbors in a public forum. As soon as we can we are going to get an online directory of media outlets nationwide, so you can find print, broadcast and online reporters who can publicize your efforts.

Media Relations

Dealing with the media can be intimidating; watching the nightly news or reading the papers, it all seems so big and important. But behind that façade are real people, with families of their own, doing real jobs for real bosses and facing the same kinds of pressures and restraints we all do. If you remember that and follow a few simple rules, you can get the most positive coverage possible for our story.

Here a few realities that will help you understand the reporter’s world, so that you can connect with them and their needs. The first three deal with reporters themselves, and the last two with their bosses, the editors and publishers.

• Reporters are almost always underpaid and over worked
• Reporters are almost always on deadline and in a hurry
• Reporters see themselves as public servants and seekers of truth
• The media is a business, news is its product and it needs product
• The money for almost all media comes from advertisers

If a reporter calls or visits you or an event you are putting on, and seems gruff and impatient, it is because their boss has given them way too much to do, and not nearly enough time to do it…and that happens pretty much every day. For the most part they thrive on the pressure, but they sometimes see it as giving them the right to hustle everybody else along to meet their deadline. The key to getting positive treatment is to make it quick and easy for them. They never forget who helps them get their job done and who makes it more difficult.

You can make it quick and easy by thinking ahead of time what are the two or three most important things you are trying to get across, say that kids are especially vulnerable to pesticide poisoning, or that fertilizer run-off pollutes water supplies. But – and here is the key – you have to be able to say those things in a few words, without rambling, so that the reporter can easy get out of it the short quote that you see in the papers or on the radio and TV every day. Read or listen or watch, and learn how to provide the same. Second, and just as important, is not to just state those facts, but put them in local perspective: “Every pound of phosphorus in that synthetic fertilizer that gets washed into Local Lake results in another 200 pounds of algae, and that costs more than $15 a pound to clean. Our town can’t afford that.” Any statistic needs to have what the news people call a local “hook.”

Look at the research that we have compiled on this site, then look around your town or county or city for local examples and use those examples when you talk to the media…but have the research available, because the reporter will want to be sure that what you have said is true, and proven…and a good reporter will ask for it.

Don’t be afraid to have material ready. You can even write the whole story for smaller papers, who have less staff, and they may run it as-is. Their business runs on advertising, and they need stories of local interest to go with the ads or no one will pick up the paper, so you do have something they need as long as you give it to them in a form they can use. One thing to remember though: the advertisers are local too, so don’t get that specific in your “hook.” Don’t mention by name the local store that sells the fertilizer you are criticizing or they may pull their ad from the paper. Let the market and the media do that part of the job; you provide the information and the education and they will do the rest!

Press Contacts

To help you get publicity for you efforts on behalf of SafeLawns and organic, we included a Web Link to a listing of Press Associations around the world. From this you can find the contact information for just about any newspaper in the world.

Access the International Press Association List

Downloads Section

This is where you’ll find materials that you can print and distribute, or play on a stand alone computer or television setup. Be aware that some of these files are fairly large, and if you are using a dial-up connection instead of cable or DSL, they may take a long time to download. This is especially true of the files for banners, posters and video or presentation files.

If download time becomes an issue, you can email us at volunteers(at)SafeLawns.org and we will send the files out to you on a CD or DVD. We really appreciate your efforts and will do whatever we can to help you help us.

SafeLawns & Landscapes Symposium 2007 Overview

Overall		PDF
Consumer		PDF
Professional		PDF

Handouts

Handout	Top 10 Tips for Organic Lawn Care		Word		PDF
Handout	Lawns and the Environment		Word		PDF
Handout	Lawns and Human Health		Word		PDF
Handout	A Few Lawn Factoids		Word		PDF
Handout	SafeLawns Membership Signup		Word		PDF

Logos and Sticker Files

These files will make it possible to add a SafeLawns logo to printed materials or web sites. In general you are best off to use the ones marked JPG for the Internet and the ones marked PDF for printed materials. The ones noted as “sticker” files are formatted to print on standard sheets of stickers that you buy at an office supply store, and can be printed either in color or black and white depending on the kind of printer you have.

Web/Print	SafeLawns Logo ( 278 x 73 px)		JPG
Labels 14 Up	SafeLawns Logo (1.5” X 4”)		Word
Stickers 12 Up	SafeLawns Logo (2.5” Round)		Word

Poster and Banner Graphics

If you have a fast internet connection these files are well worth having, but if you don’t (if you hear a dial tone and then some static when try to connect to the Internet because it is dialing out on your phone line) you’d be better to contact us by e-mail – at the address volunteers@SafeLawns.org – and let us send you a CD or DVD by mail with the file on it. These files can be taken to a local print shop (or a UPS or FedEx-Kinko’s) to have posters printed up to about four feet wide or six feet tall.

Vertical Banner	Natural Lawn Care (6 Ft tall)		JPG
Vertical Banner	Synthetic Lawn Care (6 Ft tall)		JPG
Horiz. Banner	SafeLawns Logo (4 Ft wide)		Word		PDF

Op Ed Materials

One of the best ways to get the organic message out is through the editorial pages of newspapers. We try to get as many Op-Eds printed as we can, but we don’t have the resources to submit to every news outlet in the USA, but you can submit them to your local paper for us, and that would be an enormous help. The chances of a piece on organic lawn care running on the Op-Ed page are actually much larger in the smaller regional papers. The Op-Eds below print with an included cover letter.

Op Ed	The Next Frontier of Organic		Word		PDF
Op Ed	The Standard of Perfection		Word		PDF
Op Ed	Weed and Feed the World?		Word		PDF
Op Ed	How Green is Green?		Word		PDF

If a piece you submit does run in the paper, we would love to know about it and would appreciate you mailing us a clipping, as well as emailing a link to the newspaper’s website if they have one. That way we can monitor the success of our campaign nationwide and report on it to other volunteers.

Letters To The Editor

Another good way to get press is simply to write a letter to the editor. We have all seen something in the paper that prompted us to dash off a letter. The problem is we all have such busy lives now, and especially on matters of some scientific dispute it is hard to find the time to dig up the facts we know we’d need to make a convincing argument.

One of the things we are doing with this website and our blog is try and get all the information you’d need in one place so you can put it to good use! Our research and reference pages provide the background, and as soon as time permits we’ll be putting up sample letters on topics that seem to come up frequently in the newspaper. We’ll provide fully formatted letters, and plain text paragraphs that you can insert into your own letterhead.

Terms Of Use & Disclaimer

The files provided on this page are ©2007 by The SafeLawns Foundation. Personal use of these files is permitted for the furtherance of the foundation’s goals to advance the use of organic methods in lawn and landscape care. You may reproduce them for these purposes without charge, but we cannot reimburse you for expenses associated with their distribution unless arranged in advance. Please do not add to or change these documents without written permission as you may subtly change their accuracy or meaning. We do thank you for your efforts but must insist on these terms, and by your use of the materials you agree to abide by the terms stated.