The Public Relations Blog

Highlight the currency of your media pitches to interest journalists.

When you consume news, you may notice a pattern: Most news is timely. Likely, you prefer to hear about events that happened recently — the more current, the more interesting. This is called timeliness, and it’s one of the most important pillars of newsworthiness.

Catch journalists’ and news consumers’ attention with well-known names.

Have you ever seen a news story about a celebrity doing something ordinary and thought, “Why do people care?”

The answer: Because they are a celebrity! A story pitch featuring a famous person is likely to catch a journalist's attention, and the story they publish will likely catch a news consumer’s attention in turn.

For some companies, especially those without a strong communication department or team, drafting of news releases is sometimes one of the more difficult things to write. While pitching may be a work of art, writing a news release is like a science project. There are many elements and best practices to writing a news release, so here are our top eight best practices for writing a news release:

To earn media coverage, your news must be interesting to more than just your internal audience.

There is a stark difference between news that is important to your company and its internal audience and news that is important to your company’s external audience. Your internal audience may include employees and shareholders, while your target external audience might be new and existing customers or clients, the general public, those in your industry, and niche enthusiasts. If you want to make your news “newsworthy” to external audiences, it’s critical to understand the difference between these two audiences. 

Journalists are gearing up for a stronger year in the post-COVID-19 era

With the world returning to normalcy, journalists are coming to terms with the realities of a post-pandemic industry. After the pandemic compelled them to take a step back and restrategize at the initial stage of the outbreak, it’s yet again necessary for journalists to modify their work habits and preferences to suit the times.

Handle reporter calls and media interviews with tact and skill

Sometimes, a company might receive an unexpected call from individuals identifying themselves as news reporters. Organization spokespersons attend media interviews to represent their brand in the media. However, if the company representatives aren’t adequately trained for such situations, such engagement might end negatively.

Here’s how to successfully deal with reporter calls and handle media interviews.

Ace an in-person news interview by following these PR pro tips

Whether you are doing a live, in-studio interview or an interview on Zoom or Skype, you must prepare for it. For in-person news interviews, these are the best ways to prepare before arrival and on the day of the interview.

Are they worth their weight?

Earned media coverage is one of the best ways to share your company’s story. Marketers and business leaders talk about wanting earned media coverage in "top-tier" news media outlets. But how do they define top-tier media versus not-top-tier media? Is there a public relations or journalism industry standard for top-tier?

Media has evolved into a place of opportunities where anyone can share content online. But, it has also created more ways for disinformation, libel, and slander to spread online. Negative media coverage is becoming a growing concern for companies and individuals due to this growing risk. Fortunately, there are media laws and steps you can take to defend against online attacks.

In this episode, Thomas Julin joins us to share his expertise on media law. He talks about how journalism has changed into what it is today and how this has changed the law’s approach. Tom also clarifies legal terms and shares his advice on facing negative media coverage. 

Companies have news that consumers aren’t going to like

Not all news a company shares will be perceived as positive or beneficial to the target audiences. Consumers will consider some news, such as closing a location, laying off employees, discontinuing a product, a supply chain or shipping delay, or increased prices, to be bad news. This type of news happens at times. So, when’s the best time to announce “bad” news?