Business entrepreneurs recognize the potential benefits of a press release announcement - visbility for your product or service that could reach a very large audience.  The challenge is often how to identify a newsworthy announcement that will catch the attention of the media to broaden its reach.

Ask 10 journalists what news is and you’ll get at least a dozen answers. At least one probably will quote the famous line: “When a dog bites a man, that’s not news ... but if a man bites a dog, that is news.” That’s a good traditional definition equating news with things out of the ordinary. The retailer Hammacher Schlemmer says it sells “the best, the only and the unexpected” – another good traditional definition of news. If you have a story that fits this traditional definition – the first, best, biggest or unusual – it’s probably news as long as there’s a reason for the rest of us to care. But many of us want to make news out of things that aren’t the first, best, biggest or unusual. Then what? Let me offer two more definitions of news:

1. News is anything at least one reporter and one editor believe is news. If you can convince one reporter your story’s news and that reporter can convince his or her editor, then your story is news because it’ll get used. So, media relations is about selling your story to the media.

2. News is about people and things that affect people. The more people affected, the bigger the story. And the biggest story of all, no matter how mundane, is a story about me. If your story’s about me, I’ll pay attention even if it’s about something mundane.

That’s a different playing field than having to be first, best, biggest or out of the ordinary. People often kill media interest in their story by portraying themselves as the best or the biggest in ways so self-serving no reporter will touch it. And stories about mundane things often get great play because they’re about things that have broad interest or impact.

Make your story only about you and you’ll kill media interest. Make it about your audience and you often can turn even mundane things into news. And the more people who will be interested, the easier it’ll be to turn it into news. Here are some examples:

- If you have data about an interesting trend, you may be able to turn it into news.

- If you work for a university, for example, are students enrolling in different classes today than they were five, 10 or 20 years ago? Has the average age of the student body changed? Are more working adults taking classes? If so, how are they paying for it? Each of these questions leads to a potential story, if you have interesting data to share.

That’s one set of examples, for one kind of organization. There are many others. What are yours? Mine the data available to you and frame it into information relevant to your audience. Then find a reporter who writes for that audience. And you’ve got a good shot at making news.

You also need a news hook, a reason for the media to write your story now. Our mythical university might pitch its story in the fall as students are returning to school, in the spring when prospective students are applying for admission or as a job-trends story at graduation time.

Don’t have any newsworthy data? Conduct a survey. It can be serious or whimsical as long as it’s interesting. Whimsical is easier. On serious issues, reporters will be skeptical of surveys commissioned by anyone with a vested interest in the results. Some examples of surveys that have made news:

• A National Cattleman’s Association survey claiming 73 percent of Americans grill beef on Memorial Day.
• An H&R Block survey asking kids questions about taxes, things like who pays more taxes Batman or Superman?
• And I once had a client who asked cell phone users how likely they were to answer their phone if it rang in various places, including church. The client was reluctant at first to include the question about church, but that was the one that sold the story because most of us react to the absurdity of someone actually answering their phone there.

Take a look at your data. You may have some great stories there just waiting to be told.

By Jerry Brown, APR.  Article reprinted from PR Newswire.

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