The Byline: PR and Marketing Insights from Eiler Communications

Media relations, one of the most powerful tools of public relations, can be difficult for businesses to understand. The tight deadlines and long lead times of reporters are often hard adjustments when beginning relationships with the press. To make it more complicated, different kinds of media prefer different styles of outreach.

Here are some general guidelines for how your company can best work with the media, with whom timing is everything:

Monthly publications
The timing of a news announcement is not as important to a monthly reporter as a weekly or daily since they have a longer time span between issues. It is important to remember, however, that monthly writers work two or more months in advance on their stories. So, they are less interested in breaking news (which will be out of date by the time it’s published), and more interested in trends, new technologies and hot industry topics.

Writers for monthlies will want to know less about your product and more about how it solves a critical business problem impacting corporate America—there needs to be business value to your company’s news. They look for stories for which they can talk to several sources, including vendors and customers.

Some writers cover your industry all the time but some are on assignment armed with only basic background, so it’s helpful to ask about their familiarity with the topic before launching into a discussion.

When preparing for an interview with a monthly publication, think less in terms of specific your products and more in terms of market issues, the direction of the industry, business benefits and customer examples.

Weekly publications
A weekly reporter’s job is as it sounds - to turn out stories every week for their print and/or Web news source. Weeklies publish on different days depending on the publication, so do your research to figure out your target weekly’s schedule. Don’t try to meet with or call writers on their “deadline” day - they are writing their articles on a time crunch and are not open to ideas for the next issue yet. Understand where their window is for receiving news for the coming issue.

Weekly and daily reporters (more on them later) are competitive. They like “scoops” - stories that other media don’t have access to. It’s smart to offer your story to one publication at a time and let them know they have the opportunity for an exclusive. Or, provide your news a week in advance to the reporter and issue your news release to the masses a week later.

Because they have to turn out stories more rapidly, these writers are not usually able to take as much time to meet with you (expect 20 to 30 minutes). You can ensure enough time is devoted to desired topics by asking the reporter what he/she would like to cover before the interview begins.

Keep in mind that even if you are interviewed, many factors influence whether your story will actually appear in a weekly publication. If a major local news event happens that week, you could get bumped.

Daily publications
Daily reporters are on deadline every day, so they usually need to get your news well in advance of the time you would like it to appear in print. On the other hand, they may call you and request information for a story that will publish that same day.

The best way to help a reporter in this situation is to ask what the deadline is and then work to get the information they request as quickly as possible. If you are able to aid a reporter on a tight deadline, your responsiveness will likely make you a source they will want to return to in the future.

Both daily and weekly reporters are less likely to have as in-depth industry knowledge as monthly writers, and will often be more focused on your business’ value to consumers than the industry. Feel free to ask a reporter how much background he/she needs before the interview, and understand that you will need to explain why your news matters to the general public.

Television
The most time-sensitive of all news media, TV actually prefers not to receive your news more than a day or two in advance. News desks keep a day book of potential events for their camera crews to attend each day, and two sets of show producers meet, once in the morning and once in the afternoon, to decide which events make the cut.

TV media want to see your news in short and sweet form. Translation: don’t send them your news release. If you want to publicize an event, provide key information as concisely as possible (what, where and when) and detailed information about the visuals available for cameras (i.e. “kids playing on new donated playground”, “governor cutting ribbon in front of new building”, etc.). Coverage of your event depends largely on whether a camera crew is in your vicinity at the time. Understand that even if a TV station says they are coming in advance, they may not be able to get their cameras there if something newsworthy happens across town.

If you are aiming for an on-air studio interview, provide some background about why your topic is relevant by including relevant statistics and trend information, and why you are qualified to talk about it. TV news producers will make content decisions based on what they think the viewing audience needs to know, so if you can show that your news is relevant they are more likely to set up an interview. Be prepared—interview segments sometimes tape very early in the morning! Understand that your interview may occur outside the 9 to 5 realm.

More resources on this topic:

• Cision’s white paper, Targeting the Media, available on the Bulldog Reporter web site
• The Bad Pitch Blog from Richard Laermer and Kevin Dugan—thoughts from journalists on what NOT to do, and what works in media relations
• The American Journalism Review, for articles about journalism and the news industry

Posted by: Rebecca

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