Media

Learning Objectives

When learning how to deal with the media, the main thing is learning how the different media operate, what stories they are interested in, and how they handle them.
A professional staff operating with a well-planned communication strategy can help develop a professional working relationship with the media that will benefit both them and you.

The media cannot be ignored. You do have to deal with them, but you do not always have to do so completely on their terms.

Reporters cover organizations because they make news. The most important skills reporters have are:

1. Being able to ask the right questions; questions that will give them the information they need to produce the news stories they are hired to produce;

Being able to digest and then explain the answers to those questions in ways that their viewers, readers, or listeners will both understand and pay attention to;
Being able to do it all under deadline pressure, even when they have little—and sometimes no—knowledge or background information about the story they are working on.

The most important skills a organization’s media relations department can have are:

1. A working knowledge of how the media actually operates;

2. At least a nodding relationship with those reporters who regularly cover them and their sector of activity;

An ability to answer questions promptly and properly.

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The Care and Feeding of Journalists

Successful public relations people and the organizationions they work for identify five basic truths about dealing with the news media.

Journalism: They know how the media works. They know that the only thing the reporter is interest in is a good story.
Needs: They know what reporters need. As we have seen, reporters from national network television have different needs than those from a community weekly newspaper or a trade association magazine. Even the daily paper and the national newspaper need different information. In other words, while all the information you provide reporters about the new digital widget story will be similar and have certain key points in common, the emphasis will be different for each.
Deadlines: Good PR people ask reporters what their deadlines are, and make sure they get back to the reporters before deadline—even if it is to say that the requested information is not available. Even if they can’t give the media everything, good PR people always manage to give them something useable.
Professionalism: There is nothing personal. You are doing your job and the reporters are doing theirs. The reporter’s primary interest is in getting the best story possible. How it makes your organization look is not something they are concerned with. Their only concern is the story.
The Importance of Being Honest: Good PR people tell the truth, or decline to comment. Lying to the media will get your organization in deep, deep trouble with both the media and the public they report to.

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News Releases

A PR person’s basic tool is the news release. They are used to get organizational messages out to the public. It is the story that a organization wants to tell; an attempt by the organization to explain itself to the outside media and, it is hoped, the world at large.

A organization can shape and control the news release it delivers to the media. Regardless of what the organization might want, however, the media shape and control the message they pass on to their consumers. As a rule, the media use news releases as only a part of the final story that the public sees. You can prepare releases that increase the chances of getting your message out to the public in the way you want it presented. At times it is even possible to circumvent the media entirely and take your message directly to the public.

A news release is best looked at as a form of organizational journalism. Like a news story, it must answer the basic questions of journalism: Who, What, When, Where, Why, and, if known, How.

A journalist will usually take the news release as a starting point for a story. Sometimes the reporter will just rewrite it, using some or all of the information the release provides. More often, however, the reporter will have more questions—sometimes for the organization and sometimes for others outside of the organization who could be expected to comment on it. These questions might take the reporter and the story anywhere, and lead to questions the organization might want to ignore or downplay.

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When to Send Out a Release

One of the more common misconceptions—or myths—of senior management is that the media will treat them as respectfully as their employees do; that all they have to do to get the media to report what they want reported is to have their PR staff send out a news release. That’s not the way it works.

One of the more unpleasant aspects of being in PR is not facing a hostile media, but facing a hostile management that can’t understand why the media is ignoring its news releases, especially when the issues are so important to the organization.

Here are 10 questions to ask yourself before sending out a news release. The more “yes” answers you can honestly give, the more likely it is to be used.