PR 101 is an ongoing column about media relations best practices.
It is important for any organization to demonstrate their media literacy by ensuring that news stories about them appear in their community media sphere. A lack of communication by organizations to their local community media represents a missed opportunity for audience development. Media coverage is vital to every many organizations' causes. It should spring from and support your organization's mission and overarching goals.
Make the journalistʼs job of researching and reporting your story as quick and easy as possible. Get creative. Pique the editorʼs interest. Remember, too, that media people never have enough time. Why not help them out? Do the research. Get the quotes. Do the story for them. Remember, they do not have to do anything—you have to make them want to do something.
A story you pitch about your organization to the media should be unique and inherently interesting, be the story of a struggle, an achievement or be something that makes a difference. Stories always have a human dimension. They are about people and not events. When making your pitch, try to appeal to senses and feelings rather than the intellectual elements. Offer fresh angles. Submit little nuggets of news that can generate coverage. Suggest different approaches to a story by getting a high profile person involved or offering an exclusive in-depth interview to a reporter.
News, as the word implies, must be new and this is the most important criterion. News is about change, trends and new developments, events that are different from the norm, and information that people previously did not know. Arts events that are relevant to peopleʼs lives qualify as news. Editors are always demanding that reporters do stories about events that impact the lives of ordinary people. They want real people as "characters" in stories.
News stories do not have to be one-off events. In the minds of editors and producers, different stories deserve different amounts of coverage, both in terms of the space and time allotted to them in an edition or program, and in terms of the frequency that the story will be covered. An ongoing story can have "legs"—in other words, it is sufficiently interesting and complicated that it will be covered several times a month, while it continues to develop or until there is a resolution. Some stories are so hot that they are deemed to deserve daily coverage. You can always ask an editor how much coverage your story merits and try to make your releases and phone calls fit this time frame. Much of this is about how you portray your work or issue—what the media calls framing. Think about your pitch in terms of the benefit it has on the community. Frame your issue in a way that shows how and why it matters.