To interact effectively with reporters, you must understand the news business, how it works, reporters’ daily routines, what they need to do a story and when their deadlines occur. Know how they prefer to receive information — by phone, email, SMS or tweet. Understand what the daily schedule of a reporter is like: They often are juggling numerous stories, having to update ones they have already done, and working across media platforms — writing, shooting video, doing audio transmissions, blogging and tweeting.
It is crucial to get to know journalists before you have news. When you — or they — are new to a job is a great time to get to know each other. Have coffee or tea and learn about their particular news interests, their deadlines and how they like to be reached. It can be too late to get to know a journalist in the middle of a crisis.
Always remember that cooperation is a two-way street: Not only do reporters need government officials to get information, reporters can be an important source of intelligence on what is going on and what might come up.
Maintain up-to-date lists of media contacts so you can quickly target your news in a crisis.
• List the names of reporters, bloggers and social media reporters, their affiliations, their beats or special interests, addresses at work and at home, mobile phone numbers, fax numbers, e-mail addresses and Facebook and Twitter addresses.
• Maintain separate lists of reporters by beat or interest and by geographic region, and make sure the lists are kept up to date.
• Know how each contact wants to receive news — by email, tweet, SMS, fax or hard copy.
• Know each reporter’s deadline and don’t call during those times.
• Find out the name, title and contact information of the person in each media outlet who decides what news will be covered and at what time of the day, week or month story decisions are made. Learn how far in advance of an event a media outlet wants to be notified.
• Put news in the format that journalists can use. Do not bury your news. Put the who, what, where, when, why and how at the top.
• Summarize. If you have a report, write an executive summary.