mXcellent

Scan by Michelle Davie. Click to embiggen.

So a few people saw the above on page five of last Wednesday's issue of Brisbane's mX (the free afternoon newspaper distributed to Brisbane city commuters).

As a few readers may know, where here at the Brisbane Ultimate Blog have many more ideas that we can get around too, but I figured we'd share the tale of this one for others to emulate.

So anyway, I catch the train and see the mX fairly regularly. Its colourful and I suspect fairly cheaply run (ie a lot of the material is taken from elsewhere - not just Sydney and Melbourne, but it feels very like the London mX I used to read), but also appears very interested in what it's readers have to say.

It was about a week before Nationals, and thinking about what their production timescales might be like (I figured they gathered local stuff a few days before printing, where other papers might have a daily or weekly timescale) I figured to do something.

So I dug around to find the editor's direct email address (tip here - always find the highest individual email address you can find for direct access - I think this gets better success than emailing a general email box and sent the following email on the Thursday the week before Nats:

Dear Editor,

I think its great that you've continued from day one to cover the local arts scene - plays, shows, music - on a daily basis.

It's great to have a Brisbane focus on what's on.

But how about a little love for the local sports scene? I'm not talking about the Broncos or Bulls - but sport that's happening at the same level and involving local people, particularly the alternative, quirky, interesting, off-the-radar stuff.

Here's an idea for you - the Brisbane Ultimate Frisbee Teams - Firestorm (mens) and Sultry (womens) are having their final scrimmaging session this Sunday 23/4 from 3pm at Dorrington Park in Ashgrove, before going off to the National titles in Coffs Harbour next week.

Send a photographer down - its colourful and energetic.

Give me a call if I can help.

But if Ultimate Frisbee isn't your go or this weekend's no good, I'd still like to see some local alternative sport in there, as well as the arts scene.

Keep up the good work.

Name
Phone Number

I'm sure you can see what I was getting at.

Anyway, it proved very successful as within 10 minutes of hitting 'send' the Editor phoned me asking to set up a photo shoot. I then talked to the photographer and talked about possible times and places.

Alas, they didn't do weekends, but with a bit of quick emailing we managed to line up a few Firestorm lads to meet at UQ around lunchtime on the Monday (I couldn't make it due to work, although plan b was to use the City Botanic gardens and whatever city workers we could get ahold of).

I made sure the photographer had a handful of mobile numbers for the boys and the lads had the photographer's numbers and there was a clear indicator of time and place via joint email.

A quick phone interview gave a journo some words to go with the picture (alas, I was unprepared and at work, but it turned out ok I hope - and I think Firestorm have forgiven me for the assumption that I'm one of them, and now made me honourary Firestorm Media Manager or something).

Anyway, the photography went well (well done lads!) and Wednesday afternoon there we were! Just in time to grab a handful of copies to take down to Nats for all.

We'll try to chase the photographer this week to see if we can copies of some of the other shots, and post them here and at quda.org for the duration.