Media Relations: What is news?

The Compeling C's: What is News?

• Crisis: the drought is an example


• Catastrophe


• Crime-try to stay away from


• Conflict


• Change


• Corruption


• Color


• Tie your stories to one of these and you have news

What is News?

• Timely, immediate - not history or boring meetings


• Affects many people in some way


• Innovative - what we can do now that we couldn't before


• Interesting - unique look at lfe or new angle on old story. (As a journalist, this can be hard if you have to cover the same thing again and again. You always have to look for the one little thing that is different from before; We as PR people need to provide this)


• What journalist decide is news. (know your journalist and what they are interested in. Give them the stories that relate to them.)

Journalist are friendly people who are not necessarily your friend. You need to be careful not to tell them things that you should not. Less knowledgable about your field than you are.

What do journalist want:

• good story-with lots of good angles; using many elements (pictures, video, etc.)


• good quotes-need to find and teach people how to do this. From Faith's experience, scientist can be very bad at this


• the feeling that they understand the issue after 20 minutes as well as you do after 2 years


• Your respect, not necessarily your affection


• Recognition - thank you for taking the time to come and get the story right


• You to be open and honest - not necessarily tell them everything but tell the truth


• To catch you if you lie

You cannot lose your reputation or you will no longer be able work. You might have to fight to do this.