“>Raising the bar on fundamental skills and services in our tenuous relations with the press
On any given day, people bearing the moniker of PR consultant reach out to reporters and editors with story ideas. This process will yield results based on the quality of what is presented, how it is packaged and its relevance to the media channel approached. Unfortunately, on occasion, minor league “professionals” in the field demonstrate that cliched views held by some reporters about PR people are indeed true - as often feted in the laughable fictional portrayals of movies and TV shows.
At a basic level, clients expect their investments in public relations services to result in effective translation of their brand or corporate messages in editorial media channels. Our role in the media relations and publicity process - what we often refer to as media placement activity - is to re-cast brand messages within a defensible, salient and newsworthy story idea. Media is not in the business of doing commercials for business - a story can bear a commercial quality that achieves the client objective - but, most likely, it will be positioned inside a broader problem/solution presentation or other vehicle that meets the news value and reporting requirement that drives the editorial media business.
At its optimal level, media relations should revolve around constructing a trustworthy, symbiotic relationship between PR and the press. We, in the PR arena, should be reliable sources of well-packaged and properly researched content. A strong outsource of material that helps feed the “media monster” with its un-ending need for top quality story material. All interests are served when the product in question is built on story telling that is interesting, relevant, truthful, entertaining and assembled in a manner that is also respectful of editorial sensibilities - such as the use of outside third party quote-able sources.
Professional development is a big thing at Wheatley & Timmons. We believe our reputation with the media - as a reliable source of news content - is just as important as our reputation with clients. In an effort to continually improve our work in editorial placement, we recently invited a panel of reporters/producers to participate in a media relations roundtable at our offices for the purpose of discussing the ins and outs of what they need, and how best to build an effective working relationship. We heard familiar stories of ham-handed efforts by the untrained or oblivious novices who harangue reporters with stories that are devoid of news, lack of responsiveness to reporter queries on deadline and other assorted miss-steps. As a professional this can be agonizing to hear.
We should work together to exorcise our profession of fluffy, self-serving publicity efforts that immediately fail the time-honored “so what and who cares” test. Or the absence of doing basic homework on media properties, their specific audiences and editorial slant - without this knowledge stories that are not relevant to a news organization’s preferences are pushed their way without regard to its usefulness.
Or worse, marginalizing this important work by moving the activity far down the internal food chain to relatively inexperienced people - even interns - who are made to “dial for media dollars” in an attempt to remind reporters over and over again about a story they simply can’t and won’t use.
Standards of practice should be maintained that demand professionalism and integrity at all times in the work put out there for editorial consumption. This is ultimately respectful of the role reporters play in reporting, as well as our role as communications experts, In the end, clients are better served when their media relations team truly understands what those two words mean and how to walk the fascinating line between the needs of commerce and the requirements of news organizations. These two worlds can be bridged successfully, but only when the developers of news material and ideas make the effort to build the story the same way a reporter, editor or producer would handle it themselves.
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