There are a few services out there that charge PR people like me thousands of dollars to post press releases online, and spam them out to reporters all over the world. You can search these databases to narrow down your criteria by sector. And then, perhaps, you might only spam a few hundred reporters.
But I don’t use these wire services. I pitch.
⚾️
Why? Because as a reporter I never once ran a press release as a news story in nearly a decade on hard news desks. Occasionally I would follow up with somebody quoted in a press release and try to develop them as a source for original reporting in an area I was interested in working on, longer term. But I regarded press releases as news that everybody else already knew the story I might have reported on. And so, they went in the wire mesh file next to my desk. The one on the floor with the plastic basketball rim attached, which we emptied every night.
As a strategic communications consultant I offer my clients this piece of crucial advice: Don’t use wire services, except occasionally to post a press release on the wire service’s website as a way of legitimizing what you’re doing, and perhaps having a publicly available link to the release that tells people: “Hey, this thing really happened!” But that’ll cost you a few hundred dollars you might more effectively spend paying me to pitch the story for you. I mean, assuming you want to see the story written about by a journalist in your area. Show it to the board. Show your donors. Get the moneyyyy.
Ok. This is not rocket science. But it does benefit from a thick skin and a degree of realism and finesse. It’s better for you or me to find reporters who are working in your area, and to build relationships with them based on their evident areas of interest. Over time, you might then reach out to them with something they might find interesting. You might do so on an exclusive basis, depending on the nature of the relationship. The goal, though, is for reporters to genuinely be interested in what you’re doing. They might even make suggestions for things you could do in your area that might be newsworthy. And those are golden nuggets of information that I would argue should shape your strategy.
My clients want their work featured on TV, on the radio, and on the front pages of the world’s major newspapers. I tell them the best way of doing that is to watch the TV and read those papers. Try to pick up on where the conversation is going. Who’s the most interesting person leading the conversation? Which voices chime with your worldview? Which don’t? If you were one of those voices, what might make you pay attention if somebody emailed you? And what wouldn’t?
See, you’re already thinking like a world-class pitcher.
Relationships. They’re the best place for all of us to start, in life. And they’re the best place for us to start when it comes to attaining press coverage. Save your thousands of dollars on good for-very-little wire services and pay a nice British man to help you, instead. That should be my motto. If only I could get over my other motto in life, which is: “Why can’t everybody just be nice?”
