THE NEW RULES OF THE GAME

The rules for media relations success - even in this economy, and even with a rapidly-shrinking media base - are so simple that they bear repeating:

TARGET your media.
TARGET your journalist.
TARGET your pitch.
TARGET how you can become an ongoing resource for the media, rather than a pain-in-the-ass shill for your client or company.

People...the rules have changed! "Pitchmen" (or women) who specialize in pushing a button and sending out the same release to hundreds of media (no matter what their demographics, their slant, etc.) have gone the way of the dinosaur. "Output" artists who just throw a bunch of mud (hundreds - or thousands - of releases) against the wall and hope that some of it sticks are no longer welcome in journalists' inboxes.

There aren't many journalists left to "pitch" these days, of course. Recently, a good friend of mine was laid off after 22 years as an Editor at a major daily. A few months earlier, he had mentioned to me that there were so few people left in the newsroom that you could roll a bowling ball across it and not hit anyone. And that you practically had to shout across the room to converse with any other journalists.

In this new world, if we don't help journalists do their job, they're not going to help us do ours (generate coverage)! And if that becomes the case, our own offices are going to look like newsrooms do today - empty.

Steve Winston
President, WINSTON COMMUNICATIONS
(954) 575-4089
steve@winstoncommunications.com
www.winstoncommunications.com