Groups always ask us how to get featured on more mainstream press. One of the things they are smart enough to realize is that just having music out and putting out a new record rarely gets an unknown band in to bigger press. Instead you need to make or find a story that is part of a narrative writers will write about.
Look at the news including your state and local paper and find stories they regularly write about and find a plausible way to work your group into that story. Does your group have a van that runs on bio-diesel you can easily get your tour promotion worked into an article on that subject in the local paper by pitching it to a writer and how we can get off the dependency to horrible companies like BP. Do you regularly play in mosques? Well probably not, but we know the news can’t shut up about the fake controversy right now. When you find a story you could have a connection with, get in touch with the writer at that paper and pitch the story. Use your imagination and you can probably convince a writer looking to easily fill a word count to do an article about you, just don’t abuse this concept, The paper grow tired of your ploys to get in the news if you are too ridiculous, so put down the Osama Bin Laden costume and stop calling the mosques for gigs.