Your news isn’t interesting just because you say it is.
Too often officials criticize the media for not running the stories they want them to run. Yet, when you ask journalists why they didn’t, their answer usually is that the “story” was not interesting, timely or important.
Understanding what is newsworthy helps you get news coverage.
“Good news stories usually don’t make good news. They are not interesting,” admitted the public affairs chief of a U.S. government agency.
One way to get attention for your story is to tie your information to important ongoing stories or the hot news story of the day. Another technique is to use special events or holidays as a hook to your news. For example, in the winter the head of a nonprofit educational organization released a survey on college students’ knowledge of American history. It got no coverage. He re-released it on July 4, hooking the findings to the U.S. national day. This time the press attention was enormous.
What makes news?
• Events close to home — or news that can be translated into local terms. As the old saying goes, “All news is local news.”
• Controversy and conflict.
• Timeliness. News today is up to the second.
• Impact — something that impacts a number of people.
• Prominent people.
• Personal turnarounds or dramatic reversals of fortune.
• The unusual. “Dog bites man” isn’t newsworthy. “Man bites dog” is.
• A current issue or hot topic. The 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami that damaged nuclear power reactors resulted in many news organizations worldwide doing stories about nuclear-plant safety in their countries.