Monday Morning Media Minute

By now, most of us know who Michael Phelps is.  But what about Jason Lezak, Peter Vanderkaay and Ryan Lochte?

Among them, Lezak, Vanderkaay and Lochte won five gold and four bronze medals at the Beijing Olympics.  But most of us wouldn’t recognize their names.

Lezak’s come-from-behind anchor leg in the men’s 400-meter freestyle relay “saved” one of the eight gold medals Phelps took home from China.  Lochte won individual gold and bronze medals in races that were just 27 minutes apart.

And who can forget Phelps’ amazing finish in the 100-meter butterfly where he beat out Serbia’s Milorad Cavic by one one-hundredth of a second – less time that it took me to type any single character in this Media Minute.

Cavic appeared to have the race won.  But he eased into the finish while Phelps made one last lunge to win.  Seven golds and one silver, impressive as that would have been, isn’t the same as eight golds.  Cavic will always be known, to the degree he’s known at all, as the swimmer who almost beat Phelps.

What’s my point?

Just over 300 gold medals were awarded during the 16 days of the Beijing Olympics.  Some reporters received that many story pitches over those same 16 days.

Most Olympic athletes go home without a gold medal — or any medal at all.  Most news releases end up in the junk pile of the Recycle Bins of newsroom computers.

Getting your story told is the equivalent of winning a gold medal — or at least a bronze.  Getting it widely noticed takes the equivalent of Michael Phelps’ eight golds.

Phelps won his eight gold medals in part because he’s a phenomenal athlete.  You need a good story to get the media to tell yours.

But Phelps also won at least two of his gold medals — the butterfly race against Cavic and the relay Lezak came from behind to win — because Phelps and his teammates wanted to win just a little bit more than their competitors.  Reporters pass up a lot of good stories for other stories that are just a little bit better — or the person pitching them tried just a little harder.

I see a lot of news releases that someone decided were “good enough” to send to the media.  But good enough isn’t always good enough if you want your story to be heard, understood and remembered.

That’s my two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?

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The Monday Morning Media Minute is now available as an eBook.  My eStore features five eBooks based on the Media Minute.  To check them out, visit my eStore and buy early and often.  The eBooks come as PDF files.  You don’t need special eBook software to read them

Are you passing up opportunities to tell your story because you’re afraid the positive story you want to tell will turn negative?

Any story, no matter how positive, can go into the ditch. So, it’s important to consider the potential negative consequences before pitching a story to the media. But don’t be so afraid of the negatives that you don’t tell your story — because if you don’t tell your story no one else will.

There are times when the risks of ending up with a negative story are high enough to skip the pitch.  But my experience is that clients often talk themselves out of telling their story because of what I call the what-if-the-sun-rises-in-the-west syndrome.  They talk themselves out of telling their story by “what iffing” it to death.  In fact, sometimes it seems like the more potential a story has for making a big impact the more likely it is that someone will argue against telling it.

And the “negatives” can be self-fulfilling.  We once succeeded after several weeks of hard work in selling a reporter on writing a major story that got excellent placement, with a headline and lead that were perfect.  As I was enjoying the article, my phone rang.  It was our client, upset because there was a minor factual error deep into the story — something that didn’t really matter.  He wanted me to call the reporter and demand a correction.  He was so focused on the factual mistake that he totally lost sight of the fact that the story was a huge plus.  All he could see was the mistake that no one but us would even notice.

With that experience (and others like it) in mind, I’d love to know whether the leaders of China feel good about the news coverage of the current Olympics.  They should.  But I’m willing to bet that somewhere in Beijing at least a few Chinese leaders are fretting about the negative publicity that’s gone along with all the good.  And, if I’m right, they have no idea just how positive the Olympics coverage has been.

Nobody will tell your story if you don’t.  More often than not, you can’t tell it without taking a few hits with it.  The question is:  Do the positives outweigh the negatives.  If so, that’s a win.

That’s my two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?

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The Monday Morning Media Minute is now available as an eBook.  My eStore features five eBooks based on the Media Minute.  To check them out, visit my eStore and buy early and often.  The eBooks come as PDF files.  You don’t need special eBook software to read them.