Every organization and business needs a plan to handle media phone calls. These are the procedures you have in place to ensure only the appropriate people are commenting, and that such discussions are controlled at your end to the best extent possible, not vice versa.
Media can put your organization before a large audience. You want to handle such opportunities efficiently and professionally.
Here are four key points:
Reporters and editors always filter items before considering whether or not they are newsworthy. Just because you think something is newsworthy, it doesn’t mean media will think the same.
To achieve better results with media, it is essential that you learn to think like a journalist and editor.
Here are some key considerations:
Planning to telephone a reporter? Here are 5 opening lines to avoid (unless your plan is to be like a pit bull from the beginning!):
1. It must’ve been a slow news day! This one really raises the hairs on any reporter’s neck. There are very few “slow” news days. Most reporters or editors put potential stories through a vigorous analysis before they are tackled. If anything, dramatic staff cutbacks are seriously impacting how much a newsroom can cover on any one day.
It’s a common pitfall made by many organizations and businesses. What is it? It’s having no media relations guide. Instead, dealing with media is left to a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants approach. That’s risky. Especially, when your organization’s reputation is on the line every time a media outlet reports on it.
A media relations guide, customized to your organization, is an essential marketing tool. It becomes your template for all future dealings with media. It will also arm you with tactics and strategies to maximize opportunities to promote your organization or business and manage your reputation and public profile.
4 reasons your organization needs a media relations guide:
Gregg McLachlan, a former journalist and media manager who led a small market daily newspaper to groundbreaking, award-winning national success in Canada against much larger urban competitors, is featured in a Q&A with the International Journalists Network. The feature post taps Gregg’s expertise on small market media and how these outlets and their staff can achieve success.
Read the Q&A by clicking here.
IJNet.org is the premier global website for journalists and media managers to learn about training and networking opportunities. Its weekly e-mail bulletin reports on the latest innovations, resources and awards. IJNet publishes in Arabic, Chinese, English, Persian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. Users come from more than 185 countries. IJNet is produced by the International Center for Journalists in Washington, D.C.
Seen any really bad headlines lately in media releases? Oh boy, some are awful. Excruciatingly awful. You can have the best copy in a media release, but if the headline sucks, well, your entire effort is going nowhere fast. Headlines are the enticement or obstacle for getting more of the story to your audience.
In the media business, press releases get thrown in the blue box faster than you can say “Read me, please!” You have 10 seconds or less to grab attention. Your headline either wins you attention, or fails you big time.
Here’s a five-point checklist for creating headlines that make your audience WANT to read the copy beneath!
Have you ever read a story after being interviewed and thought, “Hey, I never meant that!” Or, “that reporter put words in my mouth!” One of the biggest sources of corrections and/or clarifications by media comes as a result of sloppy reporting via paraphrasing. This is often where people feel their thoughts have been inaccurately reported. Reporters create paraphrasing after reviewing their notes, and by recalling conversations with you at the time.
Lashing out publicly at a reporter or media outlet is something that happens every day. Politicians do it. Organization leaders do it. Business people do it. Sports team officials do it. And it gets them nowhere. You will lose.
Reporters go about their work believing in their mission: to report for the public’s right to know. Sometimes, for example, politicians don’t agree with a story. Most times, reporters have an inkling about whom will not be happy about a particular news story. But it’s not going to change how a professional journalist reports on an event or story.
Yes, you need to be careful what you tweet. Especially if you hold a key position within an organization, are high profile or a celebrity. It is becoming routine for journalists to look at tweets on Twitter to source quotes. If you don’t want to see your words in print or on air, think before you hit ‘send’.
But there’s an oddity with this whole grabbing quotes from Twitter craze among journalists. Who’s grabbing tweets made by journalists? Sadly, I do see regular examples of some journalists who cross the line with their comments on Twitter. If it’s clearly your Twitter account for company use (ie. @BillatTHISNEWSPAPER), you should be careful. It’s not the place to go spewing verbal darts that raise serious questions about your ability to be impartial when doing your job of reporting.
I’ve received hundreds upon hundreds of items in media kits over the years. Everything from food to baseball caps. And pants. Yup. Pants.
Now, don’t ask me to recall what ’cause’ or organization the pants were all about. I can’t remember. All I remember is the khaki wrinkle-free pants. It certainly wasn’t a memorable media kit, unless you needed a pair of pants. I didn’t (wrong waist size and leg length). So I gave them to a co-worker. I gave away dozens of T-shirts over the years too. Today, I use some as dust cloths.
