Improving Media Relations

By Jonathan Allen

Edited By: Butch Wardlaw

I am now a communication professional, but not long ago I was a news reporter for a newspaper. I’ve been on both sides of the media fence. I’ve seen the multitude of strategies that Public Relations Practitioners use in their media relations programs. I’ve seen where they work and where they fall short. The latter is what I want to address.

With this article I want to offer a window into the mind and world of a journalist, and I want to show you how to conduct a simple but effective strategy for building a relationship with the media and getting the ear of a journalist. Ultimately, it’s this understanding that may help your organization get the media recognition it desires.

Today’s models of media relations are often based upon a volume of output. For example, most companies create a media mailing list, and mass mail media outlets. They swarm them with press releases and sometimes even pre-written stories ready to be inserted onto a newspaper page. The underlying assumption is, the more output of press releases and news stories you throw out there, the more press coverage you will get.

Both strategies (multiple press releases and pre-written stories) leave much to be desired. Most press releases end up in the circular file and pre-written stories submitted to a media outlet are often scorned as a violation of journalism ethics. For strategies based on output efficiency, I find both are often inefficient when it comes to that bottom line for public relations practitioners: “How many stories are being reported about our organization?” The results often fall short of desired expectations. So much so, that we’ve lowered those expectations over time. In other words, efficient mass-production strategies often lack the key ingredients of a successful media strategy.

Ironically, it’s a back to basics approach that I’m toting here as the basic ingredients to a successful media strategy: low cost, low tech, and heavy on human interaction. Press releases are faceless pieces of paper, known for being biased among journalism circles. If it doesn’t catch a reporter’s eye quickly, it can be pushed off the desk and into the trash by a light breeze.

That’s why I recommend making use of face-to-face contact. News reporters are supposed to establish human contacts within their beat (area of reporting responsibility). That responsibility sometimes suffers in the in the hustle and bustle of life. Working hours get invested in building bridges to more high profile or mainstream news stories, sometimes short-changing the less mainstream, the smaller organizations or the less obvious newsworthy story or event. It’s easy for reporters to get tunnel-vision today as they pursue stories in a 24-hour news environment where the competition is tough and the pressure to punch out a story or news package is high.

Organizations and individuals in that situation can do themselves a favor by just calling up a reporter and inviting them to lunch, or a cup of coffee. Both are opportunities to talk about yourself or your organization, what you are doing right now, and what you are planning down the road. This is a great way to plant the seed of a story idea in a reporter’s mind or to pitch a story idea. Often times, reporters will grab shared information that you didn’t even recognize as being newsworthy in the process of social conversation.

That’s just the beginning of this strategy. You have to remember that reporters need a lot of things to put together a story. They need human sources to interview, they need information on paper or on the internet to review for information. Being an investigative reporter requires a lot of time and effort to produce even a single story. They have a lot of bases to cover.

You can’t do the job for the reporter, but you can make it your job to make the reporter’s job easier. That is the core theme of this media-relations strategy, making the reporter’s job easier.

Here are some tips for making it happen.

• When interacting with a reporter, mention upcoming news, events, and/or changes within your organization. Remember, reporters don’t put down the notepad, ever. Mentally take stock of what reporters are interested in hearing about. Engage in free open exchange of ideas and information.

• Once a reporter has expressed interest in something specific, take the initiative and tell the reporter that you’d be glad to gather names and contact information for potential sources for a news story on the subject. Also offer to dig through your computer at work and hand over relevant files, articles, brochures, fact sheets, anything of use to the story.

• Talk to members of your organization involved with the idea you proposed and ask if they would mind being interviewed by the media. If they say yes, assemble their names, job titles, and contact information. Send all that information on to the reporter and ask if they need anything else.

At this point, after you’ve done your part, you should stop and step away. You’ve proven yourself immensely helpful, and saved the reporter valuable time and energy by digging up a significant block of the information needed to investigate and write this story. Now you should back off and let the reporter take action. At a later juncture, if the story hasn’t appeared in the media, follow-up with the reporter and ask if they are still interested and if they need anything else. Armed with all the necessary tools and information, and your help, the reporter should be able to write a story in a condensed amount of time. They’ll appreciate that you did a lot of the grunt work.

While the rest of the business community is punching out press releases by the dozens and expending hours of work that will get poured into the trash, you can be investing in making media contacts that will gladly accept your help if it means a source of valuable story ideas and the information needed to turn them into real news stories.

I’m sure there will be a few critics to this strategy. But I believe it is media relations at its finest hour.