Telling Your Story Through the Media

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Telling Your Story Through the Media

• Kathryn Reith,
• Lake Washington School District

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Telling Your Story Through the Media

• Todays program will cover basic media relations,
  which means providing information to media
  outlets so they can cover your story. You do not
  have control over what they write or broadcast
  but you gain credibility when they say or write
  something about your school, program or students.
• It will cover proactive media relations, in which
  you initiate the story. Similar principles affect
  reactive or crisis media relations.

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What is your goal?

• Your goal is to communicate with your groups
  audience by getting a message/idea/information
  into publications/broadcasts/sites that will
  reach your audience and have a trusted third
  party tell your story
• The journalists goal is to tell a story that is
  relevant, interesting, timely, important, and
  newsworthy to their readers so they will keep
  reading and buying the newspaper, or
  watching/listening to the broadcast.
• The best way to reach your goal is to help them
  reach their goal. Then you can create a win-win
  situation.

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What is your school/program/class goal?

• Whenever you decide to do media relations, think
  about why you want to engage the media.
• Do you want to
• Encourage specific behavior, like buying a
  product?
• Encourage attendance at an event?
• Encourage donations?
• Change attitudes?
• Whatever the reason, make sure it relates back to
  your goals.

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Audience

• Who can help you reach your goal?
• Who can reach the group who can reach your goal?
• Examples If you want children to attend an
  event, they are your primary audience but their
  parents are an important secondary audience.

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Messaging

• Once youve decided what you want to achieve with
  your media relations, think about what are the
  one or two things that people should know that
  would convince them to do or think what you want
  them to. If they read or hear this story, what
  is the one thing they should remember?
• Make sure that message relates back to the
  mission of your school/district/group.

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Media relations first, the media

• Kinds of media, how they work and what that means
  for you
• Print newspapers (daily and weekly), magazines,
  newsletters. Longer and more detailed stories,
  lead times may be longer.
• Radio news, talk. Must be timely, must be
  something you can talk about.
• Television news, magazine-type shows. Shorter
  lead times, must be visual, usually a very broad
  audience.
• Internet web sites, blogs, e-mail newsletters.
  Can be instant, can reach very targeted
  audiences.

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Media relations reporters

• Kinds of reporters and how they work and what
  that means for you
• News reporters just the facts
• Beat reporters the story must relate to their
  assigned subject area
• Feature reporters less emphasis on timeliness,
  more on how-to, service or human interest stories
• Columnists can (and must)
• give their opinion
• News analysts reporters who place a specific
  breaking news story in a larger context, often
  historical or geographic

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Media relations the story

• What makes a good story
• Timely currently happening or marking a
  milestone
• Relevant to the media outlets audience
• Unique, new, different
• Human
• Clear and understandable
• More important than other potential stories or
  relating to current stories

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Media relations, now the relations

• Who do you call with which story
• Beat writer if someone is assigned to a specific
  topic area, you may go directly to them
• Editor if you arent sure who would cover a
  particular story, or there are several different
  approaches that could work, go to a section
  editor, such as the lifestyle editor at a
  newspaper
• Assignment desk for local television news, this
  person needs to know about your story. There is
  a weekend assignment person who is usually around
  on Friday afternoon catch them before the
  weekend begins for a Saturday or Sunday story.
• Radio or TV producer for a specific show, the
  best route is often the producer. The talent may
  be more or less involved in choosing the stories.
• Web content producer

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Media relations the pitch

• Know who you are talking to
• Know their publication/show/site
• Make it short and easy to understand youve got
  one line to get their interest
• Make it relevant to their audience
• Make sure you include who, what, when, where and
  why.

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Common Story Types

• Position your story as one of the following if it
  fits
• First or only
• Trend
• Anniversary or milestone
• How-to
• Seasonal
• Review
• Preview
• Human interest
• Unique or wacky
• Policy/public interest

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Media relations tools for pitching

• Media alert for events or anything happening at
  a specific place and specific time. Includes
  basic who, what, when, where information.
• Press releases written as a news story so that
  they could be simply run as is in a newspaper or
  magazine. Journalistic style must be used, with
  the most important information at the beginning.
• Backgrounder provides more general background
  information on a subject

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Guidelines for working with the media

• Get the information to them early (see handout on
  lead times)
• Double, then triple check it (especially spelling
  of names!)
• Stay away from acronyms or jargon
• Know that whatever you say could end up in print
  or broadcast
• Its okay not to know the answer to a question
  tell them when you will get back with the
  information
• Keep the audience of their media outlet in mind
  at all times.
• Keep your organizations purpose for this story
  or key message in mind at all times
• Expect that at some point you will be misquoted

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Stewardship, or maintaining the relationship

• Thank yous are always a good idea
• Dont always call needing something
• If you cant help them with a story, try to think
  of someone who could