Pitching the Media: Feeding the Audience

Several years ago U.S. Olympian and World Cup ski racer Bode Miller was at Buck Hill ski area in Burnsville, MN for an autograph signing.  Buck Hill is the little bump in the ground that produced world class skiers Kristina Koznick and Lindsey Vonn, by the way.  Nonetheless, as an avid skier and fan of the sport I was thrilled to learn, through a PR flack that Miller was going to be in town and available for interviews.

The PR guy called me around mid-week to let me know that Miller would be in town on Saturday night and asked if I could be there for the photo op and interview.  I replied that I wasn’t sure, but that I would really like to make it down.  The difficult part was committing to the event when I didn’t know if I would have a shooter available to join me on the 25 minute ride from downtown Minneapolis to Burnsville.  At that point, I was the biggest supporter and really pushing to cover the autograph session, however, my sentiments towards the event changed drastically over the next several days.

The initial call was followed up with another call on Thursday and another call on Friday and several calls on Saturday.  The trouble with this is that I knew as much on Friday as I did on Wednesday. On Saturday, planning was being done and I knew I wouldn’t know anything until about 3pm at the earliest.  So, what ended up happening is that the PR guy was hammering me for a commitment when I couldn’t give him anything until the last minute on Saturday.  In the process, he drove me crazy and I ended up thinking, “After all that, I don’t even WANT to cover this event.”

Granted, this poor young PR dude was probably just following orders.  He was nice enough, but he was a complete pain in my butt!  What he clearly did not understand is how the news business works or if he did he was showing complete disregard for the situation through which I was trying to navigate.  It reminded me of my old selling days at AT&T when we used to badger and hound people until they gave us an answer we wanted to hear.

If you’ve never worked in the media it’s hard to really understand what their world is like.  I often use the metaphor that pitching the media is like feeding an animal, it has to eat multiple times of day and the challenge is knowing when it eats, how it eats, what it likes to eat, and often, what it won’t eat.  It’s also important to know how it likes its food prepared!

So, with that, I offer these tips:

Know when the media eats

Guess what?  You don’t pitch a media member your story AFTER you’ve seen or read a similar story in their paper or broadcast.  You’ve missed the boat.  Anticipate when the media is going to need the story and start pitching ahead of time.  Also, know when the media is planning their meal, this would be their editorial meeting.  If you want to score points with a reporter, pitch him or her a story before they go into their editorial meeting.  Do you know what it’s like to go into a meeting unprepared?  That’s how reporters feel when they go into an editorial meeting without having a story idea for the day.

Feed the media when its hungry

This is a great one, especially with lighter, feature type stories.  One day as a morning news reporter I had to do a piece that involved interviewing people at a coffee shop.  WCCO-TV is located across the street from a Caribou Coffee and so I grabbed my shooter and we ran across the street to interview some customers.  The store manager promptly escorted us out of the store and told us we’d have to call corporate communications to get approval to shoot tape in their shop.  Well, it was early, about 8am and so I called their corporate offices to get the go ahead, but instead got voice mail.  I left a message for the “big cheese” and waited about an hour to hear back.  No one called.

Working on a noon deadline, we needed to get the story shot and edited quickly so we went to French Meadow Bakery in Minneapolis.  We were greeted by the owner who, lo and behold, had a media kit waiting for us!  We ended up shooting our entire story at French Meadow and also went live at noon.  Here’s the killer.  That corporate communications guy from Caribou?  He returned my call at 8 o’clock PM! The media was hungry and we ate somewhere else.

Know what the media eats and when

Okay, guess what?  The story that’s interesting at 5am is not always as interesting at noon or 5pm.  In fact, it may not even be interesting at 6am.  For print, do you know that there is a pecking order to what publications will borrow stories from other publications?  Understand the pecking order and understand the personality or “brand” of the publication or the news cast.  For example, we have a local business publication that really only wants “best practices” type stories.  Sure, big news is of interest, but in general pitches of business stories, they want a specific angle.  One more thing about television news, the morning news will re-run something that aired the night before on the late news, but chances are they won’t run at 10pm what they ran at 6am.

Plug into industry trends

News flash!!!  The news media is shrinking!  Duh, right?  Newspapers are folding, television stations are choosing to not re-sign high priced talent and what you don’t see is that production help is being let go and they’re not being replaced.  Guess what that means?  There are fewer bodies to cover local news and if there are fewer bodies, quality news coverage suffers.  Producers are asked to do more, shooters are without reporters and in many cases reporters are asked to shoot their own video.  Get smart in your pitch, get smart in your approach to the media.  Learn to empathize instead of moaning and complaining that your stories are not getting covered.  You’re under pressure to get your job done and so is the media.

Know where the media finds its food

It wasn’t long ago that the best way to pitch media was with a news release and a phone call.  That still works today, primarily in cases which you, as a PR professional, has a relationship with a media member. However, if you don’t?  Good luck. On the other hand, learn social media and develop relationships with media members through places like Facebook and Twitter.  You’ll be shocked to see how many media are in those areas.

Know what the media will not eat

This is a big deal.  Think about food poisoning and the aversion you quickly develop towards food that has made you ill.  There’s a similar feeling media can get when they’ve been snookered into covering something they wish they hadn’t.  It’s a sick feeling when you feel like you’ve somehow been led into a story that is not legit.  Don’t be the PR person on the delivery end of this deal because you may get a hit, but it will most likely be the last time that reporter accepts one of your pitches.

No doubt, there is an endless list of do’s and don’ts when it comes to pitching media, but this should get you started if you’re early on in trying to figure out how the media thinks.  One last bit of advice that I once heard a former colleague pass on to a viewer about television news.  He said, understanding how news is made is sort of like understanding how sausage is made.  You don’t really want to know.

Ed Heil is the owner and president of StoryTeller Media & Communications an inbound marketing and public relations agency and video production company based in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Ed blogs on topics related to inbound marketing, social media, media relations, news media, video production and crisis communications.

Tags: AT&T, Buck Hill Ski Area, caribou coffee, Facebook, French Meadow Bakery, Kristina Koznick, Lindsey Vonn, media, Minneapolis, pitch media, PR, Twitter, WCCO-TV

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