Publicity For your Chess Club

Chess Clubs
1

I get the google alerts for chess. One of the stories sent to me recently was from Leominster Champion Newpaper website. The Washusett Chess Club at Firchburg State College had turned in a news story that appeared under Clubs & Organizations section of the website of the newspaper. The story was about the USCF ratings of the chess club members. The names of members, class of rating and the rating was listed. I suppose this type of story would only get published in small weekly newspapers but it might be worth a try to be some chess publicity. Reporters of newspapers are not going to write stories about chess, so chess people need to write them and submit them.

Russell Miller, Chelan WA

2

Petrel’s forum thread entitled “The Invisible Championship: where we went wrong” (under index “USCF Issues”) is in strong agreement with Rusty’s point.

Yet we need to admit that chess tournaments are not designed to be of any interest to masses of casual chess players.
A bunch of random people playing each other does not make for an interesting story to outsiders.

IF cellphone text messaging were cheaper, or if magically all chess players signed up with Verizon, then chess clubs from different cities could play each other remotely.
“Seattle chess team defeats Boston” sounds more newspaper worthy than does “Winner crowned at local chess tournament”.

3

Most of those events won’t make for an interesting story to most chess players, either.

Aside from a few locals or relatives, who cares whether Joe or Bob won at last Thursday’s chess club meeting in Nowhere Idaho?

So, what makes for an interesting chess story?

Contrast, conflict, personalities, sheer numbers.

A computer beating the World Champion is a good story.

So is a 12 year old defeating a field of adults. How widespread that interest may be depends on the particulars. (Fischer becoming US Champion is still the classic example, I suppose. Fischer defeating the Russians at the height of the Cold War was another. If Bobby Fischer’s run to the world championship happened today instead of in the 1970’s, would it have the same impact?)

Fischer became, and still is, a personality. Garry Kasparov became a personality. Is the current US Champion or world chess champion a personality?

Quick, without looking it up, who can name both the current US Chess Champion and the current World Chess Champion? I confess that I cannot.

5000 kids playing at Opryland, now THAT was a story!

You don’t have to be a chessplayer for the thought of 5000 kids doing something to be somewhat mind-boggling. If 5000 kids gathered to play hopscotch, that’d be a story, too.

IMHO, the USCF bungled that story, though.

Why? Because chess isn’t a mainstream activity, so getting it into the paper takes work. The USCF didn’t make that effort, so the stories didn’t happen.

I think the USCF still believes the old Emerson saying about the ‘better mousetrap’. Well, Emerson was DEAD WRONG. People wouldn’t cross the street to buy that mousetrap, because they wouldn’t know about it.

Plus, let’s face it, Opryland isn’t a VENUE. Now, if 5000 kids showed up to play chess at, say, Madison Square Garden, the stories would be much easier to get started. (Never mind that the Garden may not be well suited for chess, it’s one of the few sporting venues in the country that most people recognize.)

However the venue is not always important.

If Tiger Woods were to show up at a local golf course some day, ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD, the local media would show up, and maybe the national media as well.

That happens because

  1. Tiger Woods is a celebrity.
  2. Tiger Woods would make sure the local media knew he was coming!

In other words, he makes the effort needed to get the story started. We need to get chess stories started too. And right now that may mean writing most if not all of the story and spoon-feeding it to the media.

You can be sure that Garry Kasparov’s publicist made sure the media knew where he was going to be, too. Fischer had one of the best publicists the USCF ever had in Col. Edmondson. Plus he had Henry Kissinger!

4

I have often thought chess event organizers should work with groups that know how to get publicity for events. I am sure some organizers do some events with say The Red Cross or March of Dimes. One of the things is to do it year after year. One NW organizer use to hold a tournament at Maryhill Museum which is in Goldendale Washington in the middle of no where really. That Muesum has a great collection of chess sets on display. The Museum does have chess events once in awhile that have no connection to organizered chess. I dropped by one day when they were having a live chess game on the lawn.
Getting publicity takes a lot of time and effort and if the first effort does not work don’t give up try it again. I should have taken my own advise in 1972. In 1971 I tried to run or have a run a one day chess tournament in every county seat in the State of Washington. A lot of them were run. I had a free WATS line phone that I could use at the time. That helped a lot in finding playing sites and people to run the events I could not do myself. I got a number of the mayors in city where the events were held to proclaim CHESS DAY in ____. I should have done the events again in 1972 or maybe even some other year but I did not and no one else picked up the ball I had started. One needs to build on the experience one learns of doing things.
Hopefully the ACF4C will be able to continue a tie in with Shawn Alexander and chess that happened this year.

RUSTY