Selling Your Story - from Winning with the News Media

News can also be information people need. Information that will in some way affect their lives. In a democratic society, we need to know that the school board is contemplating a tax increase so we can support, or try to stop it. We need to know that a certain brand of sardines is contaminated so we can throw them away and not get food poisoning.

To successfully sell stories on a regular basis, you must know your media market, the specific styles and audiences of each outlet.

Many of the stories that are staples for newspapers are not visually interesting for television, and have no appeal whatever for radio. Videotape of the school board’s hearing on property taxes is not nearly as visually appealing as a warehouse fire. Because the number of people watching is so critical to television profits, the decision is easy. Air the fire. Dump the school board hearing.

The Compelling C's

There are eight broad categories for news stories — I call them the Compelling C’s:

Catastrophe
Crisis
Conflict
Change
Crime
Corruption
Color (human interest)
Celebrities

If you, your department or your company are going to be in the news, the story will usually have an angle that fits at least one of these categories. And it must be unusual.

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The chapter continues with examples of each kind of compelling C; how the size of the community will affect news value, the importance of timing; slow news days; weekends and other days of the week when a newspaper's news hole is larger; the need to cultivate editors in advance, so they'll know who you are when you offer them a story idea.

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Look for News Pegs

You need to contact the media while the issue is hot. If a national story develops on any subject, local editors and news directors look for a local angle. They call it a local "news peg" or a "news hook." It is a reflexive response. If you’re the first to call with a suggestion, you’ll usually be the person they interview and include in their story.

When O. J. Simpson was charged with the murder of his ex-wife, the record of his threatening and beating her became public. That triggered thousands of local, "pegged" stories all over the nation. When local police are called to a home, and there is clear evidence that the spouse has been beaten, what happens then? How tough are local judges on husbands who beat their wives? How often do local police go back to the scene of a previous domestic dispute to investigate a murder or murder-suicide?

The Easiest Sell

A news peg is the easiest story you’ll ever sell to an editor. The national or international story has already established the story’s priority. Editors and news directors put the localizing of stories very high on their agenda. But you have to hurry if you or your organization are to be part of today’s locally pegged news. Your competition may beat you in tipping the local media.

If you work in a hospital or medical research facility, there will be many national health stories you can "peg" to. Call the editor and say, "There’s a story this morning in The Wall Street Journal about fingernail transplants. Did you know we’ve been doing that here for three years? We invented the technique."

If you’re a bank executive, there are daily financial stories for which you can suggest news pegs for the local business section. "I saw the story on The Today Show about the rising cost of home mortgages. Did you know our interest rates haven’t changed in two years? We’re considerably below other banks in the state."

Local telephone and power companies can often peg to national stories about new kinds of technology and services.

Stereotypical Stories

There are certain types of stories that are absolutely predictable. Stories that are repeated year-in, year-out.

The journalists simply insert new names, faces, numbers. When the mapping of the human genome is completed, they will find that editors have an unusual, aberrant gene which compels them to publish and broadcast these kinds of stories. And that all of us have a gene that makes us want to hear, see and read them.

Because these stories are so formularized and repetitive, reporters and editors sometimes squeeze the facts a little to make the current version fit the stereotype. Easy to sell one of these —

	Hypocrites
	Anniversaries of past news events
	Bureaucratic bungling
	Dragon slayers
	Alarming risks (especially health risks)

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The chapter gives many examples of each kind of stereotypical story. If you know the personal interests of local editors, you can easily pitch stories that appeal to them. Having a news media person as a director or committee member for your organization won't hurt, either. The chapter continues with a list of managers and editors at both print and broadcast outlets, their responsibilities for news coverage, their specialties and how to appeal to them --

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Ride-Alongs

When the fighter pilots who fly in the Navy’s Blue Angels acrobatics team come to town for an air show, their first stop is every local newsroom. We can take one person up for a ride, they tell the editor.

The result is almost always a huge story, with dramatic pictures and breathless copy.

Syndicated reality TV shows like Cops use this technique. If reporters and photographers ride along, you’ll get better stories.

The Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus has historically used a similar technique to get great coverage. The circus animals are paraded from the train yard to the place where they’ll perform. Reporters and photographers are invited to ride the elephants — perhaps perform in the show as clowns.

The secret of good coverage is often to bring reporters into your life or work. Let them ride in your cockpit — walk a mile in your shoes. Only then can they see the story from your perspective.

Do It When You're Under Attack

And the very best time to bring them in is when you’re under attack. It goes against your reflexes to do it then. The normal reaction is to barricade the building; avoid reporters at all costs.

But there are many, many cases where reporters switched from attack dog to awed reverence, once they experienced, first-hand, the problems insiders were coping with.

National journalism magazines in recent years have run essays warning reporters about riding along with their story subjects. Be careful, the stories warn. If you spend very much time with them, you’ll begin to like them. You will no longer be objective.

Targeting the Audience

When people buy advertising, they shop for the medium that can best reach their target audience. You don’t sell cemetery plots on a hard rock station. Or acne remedies in a magazine for retirees.

Advertising agencies know the number of people who read, listen to, and watch local outlets. They have the demographics. In some cases, through market research and focus groups, they practically know what the audience had for breakfast.

Advertising Agency Data

If you need to sell stories on a regular basis, visit a local advertising agency and learn more about the audiences for each local media outlet.

Find out how many subscribers, listeners, viewers each has. How old are they? Male and female breakdown. Income and education levels.

When you have a story to sell, you may want to place it so it will reach the widest possible audience, or you may want to target a small, specific group. Consider all the opportunities. There are many you may not have thought of.

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Photo Opportunities

Public relations agencies and government public information officers have created a new event — the "photo opportunity." This is an event generated specifically for news media pictures. It is neither spontaneous nor unrehearsed. In many respects, it is phony. Everybody knows it’s phony. But the appetite and demand for pictures is so great, the media play along. Your success in selling a story may depend on your ingenuity in creating a photo opportunity.

Television and radio miss many stories simply because they don’t know about them in time to get a camera or microphone there. A newspaper will usually have about five local reporters for each reporter at a TV station.

Newspapers assign reporters to beats, and those reporters spend their entire day at city hall or the courthouse or the police station. They’re expected to know, and report, everything that happens there.

Television and radio depend on newspapers, and on listeners and viewers who call to tip them to stories.

Don't Cry Wolf

Public relations firms have a bad habit of trying to sell stories that really aren’t newsworthy. Once an editor gets burned by a story tip that flops, he’ll hang up on you when you call to report you just found Jimmy Hoffa hiding in your basement.

Give the editor accurate times so the staff won’t waste valuable minutes waiting for people to show up or the event to begin.

Who Gets it First?

If the story is not an event that needs to be photographed, you sometimes have to decide whether to give it first to radio, newspapers or TV. Or to all at the same time. It’s very rare to choose radio as the medium that will get it first on an exclusive basis, largely because coverage will be brief. It will not reach nearly as many people.

The Newspaper-TV Feud

There is intense dislike — hatred, really — among newspaper people for television news. This can affect how your story will be covered. In many cities, newspapers try to ignore television. If television beats them to a story, they won’t touch it. It is an ego thing. Newspaper people look down their noses at both the TV medium and the people who work in it.

Television, in their minds, is fleeting, shallow, delivered by people who are hired for their looks, not their ability or intelligence. It is showbiz, not journalism.

If television got it first, it’s hard for newspaper editors and reporters to admit they were beaten by the medium they spend so much time criticizing. So they decide it’s not much of a story. Several weeks later, they may revive the story with a new twist, trying to make it look like they found the story and broke it first.

It's Not Old for TV

Television is not so concerned about competing with newspapers. News directors will kill to beat a competing TV station to a story, but they assume most of their viewers don’t read newspapers. Just because it’s in the newspaper this morning doesn’t make it old news for the TV audience.

The rivalry between TV and newspapers over being first with a story varies from place to place. You have to test it in your market area.

To get the broadest possible coverage, give your story to the newspaper first. Because they got it first, they’ll play it bigger. Radio will read it straight out of the newspaper. Television assignment editors read the newspaper every morning, looking for story ideas. Newspaper coverage can make TV more interested in a story that may be visually dull. It is another variation of the news peg idea.

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