We’re proud to have participated in this year’s Meet the Media. Check out the full video of the panel on our YouTube channel.
Ever wondered what it takes to run a newspaper, or get a story published?
The Prince William Chamber of Commerce gathered members of the local media for their Meet the Media panel event at the Prince William Association of Realtors office in Woodbridge this week.
The event’s special guest was former Fox 5 news anchor Laura Evans Manatos, who recently decided to leave the broadcast journalism business and pursue public relations consulting instead.
“As a reporter and an anchor, I was constantly getting dozens and dozens, sometimes hundreds, of emails a day. And now, like many of you, I’m trying to get stories heard. So, I’m working on behalf of nonprofits and for profits – many of the stories are good news stories. So, how do you get through that noise? And part of the magic is through the pitch,” said Evans.
Evans, the keynote speaker, spoke about quickly getting your message out there to journalists, and how businesses can successfully pitch their stories to the media.
“When you get into the information, get to the point. Get right to the point of the story. Why should they care? And think about you’ve got one to two lines to sell your story. One to two lines. If you don’t get it in one to two lines they’re not going to get it. They’re not going to read on,” said Evans.
Stephanie Carter from What’s Up Prince William, Greg Hambrick from InsideNOVA, Stacey Shaw from Bristow Beat, Uriah Kiser from Potomac Local, Rebecca Barnes from Prince William Living, and Kari Pugh from Prince William Times all participated in the local media panel.
Carter spoke about how their publication is community-oriented, and how they focus on working with organizations and individuals to tell their stories.
“We’re very approachable. We want you to come to us, we want you to email us or call us and talk to us about your ideas. And we will talk to you about ‘OK, maybe this doesn’t work,’ or ‘Maybe we can tweak things.’ We want to work with you, because we want to partner with people in the community,” said Carter.
Hambrick stressed that being polite and avoiding being aggressive with pitches and follow up is key.
“One thing that I double back at from the first presentation is being polite when you are interacting with folks here. Sometimes, it’s that first email is really polite and that next email is angry bordering on aggressive. And that is definitely not a way to get your story printed,” said Hambrick.
For Shaw, making the point and the significance of your story clear from the start is crucial, particularly when you’re pitching to small publications with limited resources.
“You need to have some kind of pitch. It can’t just be a press release. Some of them you announce you have somebody new coming to your business, but you don’t tell me why that’s significant. There’s a lot of flattering quotes from the CEO, but those doesn’t amount to much for the readers. What do the readers really want to know? Is your business changing because you hired this person? Because we all want to know, ‘how does this change the status quo?’,” said Shaw.
