Sour grapes will get you nowhere with a reporter. When a
journalist makes a legitimate mistake - misspells the name of your
CEO, writes about your enterprise software in a feature on consumer
technologies, or misstates your candidate's position, it's up to
you to make sure a correction is made. But when you're upset by
lack of coverage, don't call a reporter to complain - much as you
might like to.
Instead, take the opportunity to forge a connection that will
likely win you ink or air time in the future. Call and provide some
information on your company. Ask the reporter point-blank how you
and your organization can be a better source or provide more
targeted material. Follow up frequently with information and ideas,
even if they don't directly serve your communications goals. In
short, build a relationship with the reporter by implementing media
relations basics. But don't stoop to whining, or, worse yet, a
confrontational outburst.
We recently received a call from the CEO of a company who was
irked by his lack of coverage in PR NEWS. We receive little contact
from this organization (aside from blast press releases), but we
had interviewed the CEO for an industry trends piece.
During the interview, he gave short, uninformative answers and
eventually told us that his company wasn't as involved in the
trends we mentioned as other companies in the arena. At that, we
cut the interview short and decided not to include his organization
in our article.
When the source called to complain, he not only accused us of a
bias toward other organizations, but attacked our interview
tactics, saying he couldn't provide detailed answers to broad
questions on industry trends.
Needless to say, this lessened his credibility. When the CEO of
a company can't provide an overview of trends in his industry (vs.
a sales pitch on his own organization), it certainly plants the
seeds of doubt.
Another source created an entirely different impression when he
called to let us know that his company would be glad to provide
information for upcoming articles on a given topic. The purpose of
his call was clear: He had missed out on coverage in a recent
issue. But his approach - friendly and informative, offering stats
on the industry and his company and promising to keep in touch -
had us disseminating his contact information to all our writers for
future reference.
A journalist is under no obligation to cover your company.
Reporters should provide fair, balanced coverage of any industry,
but if you're finding yourself consistently left out, ask why
before you accuse.