Developing relationships with media members is one of the top priorities on the PR practitioner’s list. Since COVID-19 hit, though, many media members and communicators are unable to employ traditional methods. The days of connecting at events and scheduling coffee chats are gone for now.

Regardless of tactics used, the scope of media coverage has changed astronomically. With not only a pandemic, but an ignited movement toward equality and diversity and a bruised economy, many media entities are left trying to get blood from a stone with staff cuts and fewer bodies to create content for an overwhelming news cycle.

How to Navigate Relationships Virtually

For many communicators, adapting to virtual media relations is a no-brainer. It’s something they’d been practicing for years. Many reporters prefer to receive pitches via email. What has changed is the humanity and concern for those in the media. Remember that everyone is struggling with the pandemic in their own way.

Leslie Pitterson, PR lead, ads platforms & publishers at Google, practices an empathetic philosophy when approaching press.

“Outreach autopilot is—hopefully—a thing of the past,” she says. “Even as virtual formats have become our collective baseline, everyone is still figuring out how to navigate this transition in intimate ways, from care-taking to mental health. Checking in with reporters to get a sense of their routines and how they are setting boundaries around their time needs to be [the first] step in any media strategy.”

For Phoebe Malles Ward, SVP at Lippe Taylor, experience as a magazine editor allows her to keep PR and editorial perspectives in mind when she’s pitching or working with media members.

“My editorial background provides me insight on how to market to the media and provide valuable information,” Malles Ward says. “The media landscape has changed significantly and that presents challenges, but knowing the endless opportunities media platforms offer makes it exciting to expand how we share brand stories and informative content.”

She says the pandemic presents new opportunities to collaborate with journalists. For example, the rise of virtual events and meetings is making her outreach pool much larger.

“Technology is allowing us to entertain writers outside the New York area for events, and that has been very successful since we [usually] don’t get the opportunity to see them based on location,” she says. “People want their news, and freelancers have been great partners of ours to explore/target a variety of media outlets with multiple angles.”

Getting Back to Basics

For many practitioners, not much has changed when it comes to developing good relationships with the media. What has changed is the media landscape. The issue is figuring out how to keep up with the continual changes in journalists’ beats, as well as furloughs and unfortunate layoffs.

T. Garland Stansell, 2020 PRSA chair, advises PR pros invest in a good media monitoring and distribution platform to keep up with day-to-day changes and avoid mistakes and misses in contacts.

“This makes it infinitely easier to ensure that staffing changes, contact information, beat changes, etc. are current,” he says.

Other PR pros agree that the bedrock of research is where good media relations lie. Lindsey Auslander Hartman, EVP of media in Golin’s Chicago office, notes that the principles for developing and maintaining media relationships haven’t changed much.

“Cultivating a meaningful relationship with any journalist requires a strong familiarity with that person’s work,” Auslander Hartman says. “That means taking time to read that person’s articles, getting to know the journalist on social, and learning where their interest lies.”

Auslander Hartman believes in being thoughtful with every interaction. Part of that tactic relies on prioritizing quality over quantity.

“It’s up to us to stay current by consuming media. Never reach out without double-checking a journalist’s latest story and tweets to ensure your pitch is relevant to them,” she says. “And with media publications being so dynamic, we need to pay attention to shifts at the outlet level, too. With newsroom shifts happening frequently, you never know when someone might boomerang back to a beat relevant to your work.”

Developing New Relationships

Auslander Hartman believes it’s prime time for developing relationships with media members.

“In this media landscape, we’re seeing expanded beat coverage among journalists,”she says. “They’re being asked to cover wholly different topics than what they’re used to covering. Subsequently, PR pros really have the opportunity to lean in and help these editors cover a new space with the right assets, subject-matter expert access, and authority. It can be mutually beneficial to position ourselves as a trusted and responsive resource with valuable information.”

For Vanessa Picariello, director, brand publicity at Wyndham Destinations, the ability to have adequate availability, while working in the travel industry, prepared her for developing media relationships virtually.

“Our job is to connect with and provide information for the media in the channel they want to receive it—and that varies from journalist to journalist,” Picariello says. “Most of us have already been #workingfromanywhere for a long time. My list of unusual places to engage with media includes the middle of the South China Sea, while managing a celebrity on a shoot on the beach in Turks & Caicos, and from inside a cruise ship under construction in Germany at the world’s largest indoor ship-building complex. I believe most PR pros have probably already honed their skills to do this, and those folks are the ones who are hopefully providing the best support to media.”

Auslander Hartman points out that regardless of the relationship, new or established, content creators and PR pros are working as a team during this time.

“It’s crucial to be self-aware,” she says. “As we look to the back-half of 2020, we can anticipate continued coverage of important global issues and social justice movements, plus extended news cycles around other hard-hitting news events, like hurricane season and the upcoming presidential election. We should be mindful that this is not just affecting our jobs as PR pros; the pandemic is prompting us to navigate these times together.”

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Takeaways for Pandemic Media Relations

• Media relations basics have changed little. Knowing a reporter’s beat remains the critical first step.
• As with other communication at this moment, incorporate more empathy and humanity with media. Like everyone else, media are dealing with far more than professional issues at the moment.
• Even if you have a long relationship with a reporter, check in to get a sense of current assignments and boundaries. Daycare and other issues have altered routines for many. The best time and method to pitch a journalist might have changed, too.
• Some journalists are assuming additional beats owing to layoffs and furloughs. A new beat can be an opportunity for PR pros to provide subject-matter expertise to overwhelmed content creators.
• Should your company have adequate resources, it can be useful to invest in a tool(s) to keep track of content creators’ beats, address changes, etc.
• Use virtual platforms to reach reporters who weren’t top of mind, owing to their being based far from your offices.

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