Media Relations 101

Here’s the essential thing to focus on like a laser when your job is media relations: It’s about external communications.

Your goal is getting a message out to the world through the news media. In other words, mass communications, not in-house communications.

So it’s the masses you must serve if your message is going to connect with people.

That means your company’s or client’s accomplishments are not the story you want to tell.

You are on a self-defeating path if you are writing news releases to stroke your boss’s ego.

Make clear to the client that you intend to practice media bias – a bias in favor of putting out only that news and information that will captivate – or at least interest – the news media and, thus, the public.

The most important question your mass media message must answer for people is this: Why should they care?

Your organization’s efforts, talents and achievements are important to this message only to the extent that you can communicate what your organization is doing to make the world a better place.

If a company can’t state simply, clearly, creatively and credibly how it’s doing this, then you haven’t got a message that will resonate.

Remember that when you put your message out there to a mass audience, you are competing against media coverage of celebrities, famous athletes, rock stars, political scandals, cute puppies and kittens – all the urgent, impactful, sexy, gossipy and sentimental subjects that grab people’s attention.

So you must be your own toughest critic in defining the crux of your message. What do you have to say that is authentically newsworthy, extraordinary, innovative, groundbreaking or at least a compelling human-interest story?

If your “news” can’t pass that test, then don’t put it out there. Why? Because your job is media relations – emphasis on the relations part, and the

by Joe Kullman

one and only thing that matters in this relationship is your credibility with the news media.

If your media relations efforts consist of cranking out as many news releases as humanly possible, and you don’t have real news to report much of the time – news that serves the public interest first and foremost – then you will lose precisely the credibility you are trying to gain.

Use the time and energy instead to personally develop contacts, and nurture relationships with publishers, editors and reporters. That approach marks the difference between the professional and amateur.

Joe Kullman, senior media relations officer for the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering at Arizona State University