Babe & Paul have company in the heavyweight myth space.

By Dan Pecchia

American mythology tells us that, as Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox thundered across Minnesota many years ago, their heavy steps created the state’s thousands of lakes.

In the present day, understanding of the public relations practice also gets trampled and gored now and then by mythology.

Here are three heavyweight myths about getting news professionals to cover your proposed story.

“Buy ads. The media take care of advertisers.”

This may sound plausible, as most media earn most of their revenue from advertising.

But think about what would happen if this were true: Every advertiser would send in “news” and all of it would be published or broadcast, regardless of its news value. The resulting “news” vehicle would be dreadful to consume. So eventually nobody would read or browse it, and thus nobody would want to advertise with it.

News outlets cannot survive unless they deliver content that is sufficiently interesting and meaningful to their consumers. They reject would-be “news” every day, including some from advertisers. Provide content that is newsworthy, and media will want to cover it, with or without an ad buy.

We do occasionally run across organs that sell their “news” space or time to advertisers. Buy an ad and we’ll publish your story as well, they offer.

Those outlets are not worth being featured in. Serious readers or viewers can tell when content is bought, and they don’t consume that with any credibility.

“Send tons of news releases. One is bound to hit big.”

From what we hear, there are local organizations who appear to believe this. But that doesn’t make it true.

If anything, sending buckets of information with little or news value will create the opposite of the desired result. It is like crying, “Wolf.” Earn a reputation for sending worthless information to newsrooms and it can take a long time to lose it.

The better approach is to pitch news media professionals only with newsworthy content and never with anything else. You want the reputation that anytime you’re approaching, there must news involved.

“Just hold a news conference.”

Again, this may sound plausible. News conferences, after all, deliver prepared remarks, prepared materials, people to interview and donuts.

But absent a newsworthy topic, they’re a waste of time. In fact, they could waste a lot of people’s time – not only that of news professionals but of other invitees who arrange to be there.

Stage one bummer news conference and your subsequent invites will draw groans for years.

This is not a myth: Deliver news value.

The only surefire way to regularly draw news media attention is to provide content that meets their standards for news value. You can learn their standards by studying (objectively) what they publish or broadcast and what they don’t.

News releases and news conferences are among the tried and true tools of media relations, and advertising can’t hurt. But all of these are worthless apart from content an editor or producer will find attractive.

# # #

Dan Pecchia is an Ohio public relations consultant and former business editor at both the Vindicator and Tribune Chronicle.