By: Emily John, Account Director
We all know how busy journalists are - with over 50% of journalists receiving more than 50 pitches a week from PR professionals via email, phone or social media. This means it is becoming even more difficult for us to break through the noise and grab the attention of journalists. We need to, therefore, tell newsworthy stories to set up our clients for long-term PR success.
In this blog, I will share some of the considerations that journalists keep in mind when determining if a story is actually newsworthy.
Rapid Response
One of the most important elements relates to a story’s timeliness. This may involve linking a story to an event that has recently taken place or will happen in the immediate future, as well as breaking news about developing trends or crises.
A great example of this would be the CrowdStrike IT outage which took place at the end of July. In addition to the direct parties involved, millions of businesses across the globe were negatively impacted, leaving PR professionals with the task of rebuilding trust and reputation. They had to act quickly and adopt a proactive, transparent approach to mitigate the negative fallout that the widespread system crashes caused.
Impacting your Audience
We may have a great story, but if it does not impact our client’s target audience, it isn’t newsworthy. The stories that we share with journalists need to be tailored to specific audiences, and by understanding their interests, values and pain points, we can craft a story that speaks directly to them. PR professionals can build this knowledge by conducting audience research and use empathy to create a story that resonates with them.
Human interest stories are also crucial in evoking emotion to ensure a story is newsworthy. Whilst these stories may not be timely, they usually showcase someone overcoming a conflict with the help of your client’s product or services.
Trend-Worthy
This links back to staying in tune with your client’s target audience and tapping into the trends that are impacting their industry. If a trend keeps cropping up in our target media, there is an opportunity for our clients to provide commentary or produce a story to weigh in on the trend and its wider impact.
If we look back to the summer of 2023, the “Summer of Barbie” campaign created a global buzz off the back of the Barbie movie. Businesses that weaved a compelling narrative around Barbie and integrated it with real-world experiences, forged a more impactful journey that was newsworthy at the time.
Thinking outside of the box is vital in identifying newsworthy stories and it’s up to us as PR professionals to provide journalists with the tools, such as statistics, data or imagery, that will help them make the story interesting for their audience.
Get in touch to discover how we can help you generate newsworthy stories: contact@thejargongroup.com