What is News?

A reporter I know once wrote that he was thinking of putting a sign on his desk that said: “Caution—press release crossing.”

He went on to say that “herds of road kill masquerading as news releases cross my desk every day,” but that only a few catch his attention, making him stop and take a second look.

His experience is not unique. The mainstream media get hundreds of press releases each day. A news editor I know gets over 300 e-mails a day, just by herself.

In this blizzard of press releases, how do you make sure yours gets noticed?

For me, it all boils down to one simple thing: Send news. But was is news?

  

One definition of news is the old Dog-Man Principle, which goes like this: 

“When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.”

In other words, news is something unusual, something that doesn’t happen all the time or every day. It’s not routine, run-of-the-mill, common-place.

Or, as Kirk Lapointe, former editor of the Vancouver Sun put it:

“Planes take off and land every day. We only cover the ones that crash.”

The definition of news I like is this:

Does it tell my readers, viewers, listeners something they don’t know about something they care about?

This is the kind of question an editor asks when he or she receives a press release. Let’s take a closer look at it.

Does it tell my readers, viewers or listeners.

For a press release to attract attention, it must have a local angle—something that connects the story to the people served by the media outlet.

Does it tell my readers something they don’t know.

The press release must contain new information—something that people don’t know. Otherwise, why report about it? What is the new thing you want to share with them?

Does it tell my readers something they don’t know about something they care about.

The first question an editor asks when getting a press release is: Who cares?

Of course, you care about it. So does your organization, the volunteers or the beneficiaries. But why should anyone else care?

And why should the editor or news director who gets your press release? They are the first ones you have to convince to care.

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Giving the media something their readers, viewers or listeners don’t know about something they care about is the first step in keeping your press release from becoming road kill.

In future posts, I’ll look a closer at various aspects of news, such as the local angle, human angle, impact, prominence, controversy, timeliness and hard versus soft news.