Media Relations

TV journalist Soledad O’Brien offered attendees at last week’s PRNEWS Media Relations Conference plenty of tips about storytelling and pitching. For example, when telling an ostensibly dry policy story, she looks for people whose lives are affected by the policy.

Journalists and public relations experts discussed adapting to new media strategies at the PRNEWS Media Relations Conference in Washington, D.C. on Dec. 13. The panel, “Rethinking Media Relations in the Age of New Media,” included Brandon Arolfo, head of PBS digital studios, Sara Fischer, media reporter for Axios, Nicole Smith, director of corporate communications at IAC and Katina Arnold, vice president, corporate communications at ESPN.

Press releases may be fading in popular PR practice, but in some cases they’re part of the regulatory regime. Business Wire, a distributor of press releases, and the data firm Onclusive collaborated on a survey of 17,000 press releases. Some of its findings are surprising.

Not every PR project or new client is glamorous. On the other hand, PR pros exist to generate coverage, among their many other duties. Here is a series of 8 questions that will help communicators unearth news and interesting story material in any sector. You should ask them of your executives twice monthly. At least.

Brevity, timeliness, prepared spokespersons and trusted media contacts were a few of the tactics panelists touted at a panel session on media pitching during last year’s PR News Media Relations Summit in Washington, D.C. This year’s summit features an interactive pitching workshop on 12/12 and a pitching panel on 12/13. 

Ahead of her session on day two of our 2019 Media Relations Conference (Dec. 12-13 in Washington, DC), we caught up with Lauren Lawson-Zilai of Goodwill. She discuss how it scaled its influencer program to empower local community nonprofits to recruit influencers, setting a model for how other small nonprofits can activate influencers and brand ambassadors in the process.

While some communicators have the benefit of focusing solely on social, the majority of us must take a marcomm approach for our organizations, merging public relations with social media management. For those of you tasked with media relations on top of social, I’ve got a major grievance with the online media relations world to air: the current state of pitching is infuriating. Online communicators need to break the cycle of bad pitching practices and start giving media relations the strategic attention it deserves.

We’re guessing the sudden and untimely death of Deadspin (no pun intended) as a purveyor of no-holds-barred sports and social commentary will provide a case study for business students in what not to do with a successful endeavor. This post, from PR pro Dave Dykes and PRNEWS staffer Nicole Schuman, argues that the incident also offers a bevy of PR lessons.

Most companies remain silent when a competitor makes news. An unorthodox approach is to seize the moment to get your company’s views and executives into the conversation. Just as important is to make sure your customers are aware that you have their best interests in mind at a time of unsettling industry news.

On November 4th, Apple announced a massive initiative intended to combat the housing crisis in California. The $2.5 billion plan not only marks a larger investment than Google’s previously announced $1 billion effort to combat the California housing crisis, but goes into much greater detail than Google’s initiative around how, exactly, those funds will be allocated. Apple’s ownership of its role in contributing to—and remedying—this crisis offers lessons for brands hoping to take on a social good program with substance.