A Practical Guide to Media Relations, Press Releases, and Effective Media Management

Introduction

In this briefing by PR Academy Insights editor Richard Bailey, PR Academy co-founder Ann Pilkington and CIPR PR Certificate course leader Maud Davis, look at the role of media relations in PR campaigns.

We will explore the role and writing of a press release, the importance of writing and targeting a press release for your audience, how to select the right media and pitching your news story.

What you’ll learn:

Use these links to jump to the relevant section of this guide.

What is media relations?

Public relations and media relations – an academic view

Developing a media relations strategy

Building a media relations plan

Mastering the art of the press release

Press releases and AI – opportunities and pitfalls

News releases: mistakes to avoid

Press/news release writing style and tips

Selecting the right media channels

Tracking and measuring success

Crisis communication and handling negative press

Media relations and interpersonal skills

Effective pitching techniques

Conclusion

What is media relations?

Media relations is essentially about building relationships with journalists and sharing news and feature ideas as part of a PR campaign. It can help to build brand awareness, trust and credibility.

Despite the growth of new fields such as social media and AI plus a reported decline in the amount of time given to the discipline, ‘media liaison’ is still in the top ten of skill shortages reported in the CIPR State of the Profession Survey 2024. And it comes in at number three in the list of top activities undertaken by practitioners coming close behind copy writing and stakeholder engagement.

The reporter’s friend

As part of her studies for the CIPR Professional PR Diploma with us at PR Academy, Jasmin Shearan, wrote about how PR practitioners can improve their relationship with journalists. She quoted academics John Lloyd and Laura Toogood who explain in their 2014 book ‘Journalism and PR’, that a cornerstone role of a PR professional is ‘the reporter’s friend’, encompassing how PR professionals have always helped hard-pressed journalists by providing readily available content.

Read Jasmin’s article

Public relations and media relations, an academic view

There is a tendency in the academic literature to describe an idealised version of what public relations should be (academics call this normative) rather than merely describing how it is in practice.

As a result, it is hard to find a mention of media relations in the many academic definitions.

One widely-cited textbook (Managing Public Relations from 1984) presented four models of public relations, on a scale of least to most professional. This starts with ‘press agentry / publicity’, a one-way model of practice in which the truth is unimportant. Circus impresario PT Barnum (‘the greatest showman’) is cited as an historic exemplar of this model of practice.

The reason the distinction was made between publicity and professional public relations is that the authors James Grunig and Todd Hunt were grappling with a way to show that contemporary professional and ethical public relations was different from historic propaganda.

US scholar Dustin Supa notes that media relations is often characterised as a tactical tool in the public relations academic literature and has attempted to rehabilitate it as a strategic function. In his definition of media relations co-authored with Lynn Zoch, he emphasises the focus on relationship building.

‘Media relations is the systematic, planned, purposeful and mutually beneficial relationship between a public relations practitioner and a mass media journalist.’

Two British authors have no patience with the subtlety in making a distinction between publicity and public relations, nor with the apparent squeamishness over the role of media relations.

Trevor Morris and Simon Goldsworthy, in their various co-authored textbooks, affirm the following definition of public relations, the only one we can find by any academic source that specifically names media relations as a preferred channel for public relations.

Developing a media relations strategy

Some key components of good media relations are:

• Engaging with journalists to form lasting, mutually beneficial relationships
• Knowing your audience – both the journalist and the consumer of news
• Knowing what makes news

Alan White is Vice President, UK Media Relations with Barclays. We featured Alan in our occasional #50Over50 series where he talked about the importance of relationship building.

According to Jim Macnamara in his book ‘Journalism & PR: Unpacking ‘Spin’, Stereotypes & Media Myths’, which we reviewed here on PR Academy Insights, media relations – like public relations – should be a two-way street. ‘Generalized claims that PR negatively impacts and undermines journalism need to be questioned and subjected to test against empirical evidence.’

Getting mentioned in the news is a part of media relations, but it does not explain the wider picture. Why do you want the coverage? How does it contribute to a desired public relations outcome, such as getting people to change their behaviour? And how can you measure the process?

Building a Media Relations Plan

A media relations campaign plan will usually as part of a wider PR plan that has been built to deliver against a set of SMART PR objectives. (Find out more about objective setting in our guide to planning.)

PR Academy planning toolkit

It’s important that PR and communication planning is integrated – for example you don’t want to be announcing something to the media without telling employees.

However, depending on the sector you work in there may be regulatory things to keep in mind that make this difficult. If your company is ‘listed’ i.e. it has shares for sale on the stock market you may be obliged to tell the stock market something first, before telling anyone else. An example of this could be announcing annual financial results or a major structural change – things that can shift the share price. The rules are there to prevent people benefiting from changes in a share price – up or down – because they know something that other people don’t.

Media relations goals and objectives

Taking a strategic view of media relations involves understanding the role the media plays in helping the organisation to achieve its goals and objectives as well as contributing to a better-informed public sphere.

To do this, you have to start with what the organisation wants to achieve. Ultimately, it seeks long-term sustainable success and there’s a strong argument that good media relations is necessary for it to retain its legitimacy in the eyes of key stakeholder groups.

There may be other objectives too. The company may want to launch a new product and achieve a high level of awareness in order to drive interest and, hopefully, sales. Again, the media may be important for this to be achieved.

Media relations is usually a means to an end – not an end in itself.

This is an important point – particularly when it comes to the measurement and evaluation of a campaign because the fact that you have achieved coverage in your target publication doesn’t necessarily mean that you have met your campaign objectives.

What you need to know is how your stakeholders reacted to that content. Did they read it and think it was a lot of nonsense? Hopefully not! Did they decide to try your product or service or adopt the attitude you were hoping for? This is what you need to be finding out.

The AMEC Integrated Evaluation Framework is a useful guide here.

Your media relations activity – news releases, press meeting etc – can be categorised as ‘outputs’, the coverage you received is as ‘outtake’ (i.e., what your target audiences/stakeholders took out of your communication and how they reacted to it).

The really important one though is the ‘outcome’, the effect your communication had on your target stakeholders.

One way of measuring the success of media relations that nobody should be using these days in AVE – advertising equivalence.  It is a discredited means of demonstrating the value of PR work by multiplying the assumed cost of media coverage (as advertising) by a multiplier to reflect the added value of editorial endorsement.

Also think carefully about OTS – Opportunities to see. This is an advertising concept that measures the potential readers, viewers or listeners to a publication or programme. So a magazine article may be read by the subscribers to that publication, but also to others who are shown the article, or who find it online, or who read it later in a doctor’s surgery. An advertising campaign may use a mix of media from billboards to print, radio and TV and an individual may have many opportunities to see the ad and receive its message.

Neither AVEs or OTS actually tell you what your target stakeholders thought or what they have done as a result of your media relations output.

To understand more about measuring the success of your campaign, see our guide to measurement.

Download the PR Academy guide to measurement

Mastering the art of the press release

For more than a century, the press release (better described today as a news release) has been the key document used in media relations.

By mastering news release writing, you show your understanding of news values and improve your ability to pitch stories to journalists.

So let’s explore each of these concepts because without any understanding of what makes news, what journalists are looking for and how to contact them your news releases are destined to join the thousands of others that will sit unopened and unresponded to in a journalist’s inbox.

Not only are they not achieving the desired result but each one is driving a nail into the coffin of good media relations.

The grim metaphor is not ours, nor is it new.

On a more positive note, the Cision State of the Media Report 2024 found press releases are still the top piece of content that journalists want to receive from PR practitioners:

What is a press release?

The term ‘press release’ is still widely used, but it sounds old-fashioned. Are we really just targeting print publications – and not the broadcast and online media, nor the public?

Let’s define ‘news release’ instead.  It describes what’s needed (something new to say) and doesn’t specify the ultimate audience. It’s ‘released’ because traditionally organisations did not determine what was news; that was the job of the media.

So we release news stories and journalists and editors decide which to report.

They are usually written to a format (more on that to follow) and often still follow layout guidelines that were necessary when they were printed and sub-editors used to ‘mark them up’ for use in print by writing in the margins etc.

They very often form a key part of a PR strategy and may be the first activity to kick off a campaign.

Crafting a compelling press release

The most important thing is that it is newsworthy.

News values is the term used to answer the question ‘what is news?’. Why does story X make it into the newspapers or the broadcast news bulletins? Why does story Y get so much traction on social media? Why is story Z leading the news today? And why is it so hard to generate any interest in PR story A, B or C?

What makes news?

The key question that editors need to answer to determine whether a story is headline news is: does this affect everyone?

A quick glance at the headline news at any moment will suggest that most headline news stories involve threats to life: whether war, floods, famine, fire, disease or violent crime. As readers, listeners and viewers we need to be alert to threats to our survival.

For this reason, most news is ‘bad news’. Since most PR news involves an attempt to promote ‘good news’, it’s obvious why most PR stories fail the test of news values.

The best opportunity is when your PR story involves a breakthrough in response to these threats to life: so the development of a new vaccine or medical procedure may be worthy of headline news, especially if it’s been developed in the UK or by British scientists.

But there’s more to news than the headline stories, and so there are further tests of newsworthiness than does this affect everyone?

News should by definition be new: something we didn’t know yesterday. And because it’s new it also has the potential to be surprising. An example of this is the famous newsroom saying that ‘if a dog bites a man, that’s not news because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that’s news!’

The above examples also make clear the distinction between information and news. ‘I crossed the street’ is information, but it’s clearly not news, it doesn’t pass the ‘so what?’ test. Yet ‘I crossed the street and was knocked down by a person riding an electric scooter’ might just be news as it plays to an ongoing media narrative.

There is more to news values than we’ve covered so far, but we’re following the journalistic principle of leading with the most important thing.

News values

Various editors and academics have developed their own versions of news values over the past half century and beyond.

Tony Harcup and Deirdre O’Neill provided a literature review on this topic and an analysis of newspaper stories in their 2017 paper in Journalism Studies, updated for the digital age (where news can be seen as a valuable form of content).

This leads to the following updated list of news values for the digital age, in descending order of significance:

1. Exclusivity (news organisations like to be first with the news)
2. Bad news (see above)
3. Conflict (see above)
4. Surprise (see above)
5. Audio-visuals (a powerful image makes a story more prominent)
6. Shareability (potential for online engagement)
7. Entertainment (soft stories involving human interest)
8. Drama (unfolding stories with uncertain outcomes)
9. Follow-up (stories about subjects already in the news)
10. The power elite (stories involving powerful individuals and prominent organisations)
11. Relevance (stories that are a cultural fit with the audience)
12. Magnitude (the more people affected, the bigger the story)
13. Celebrity (stories concerning people who are already famous)
14. Good news (positive stories involving breakthroughs and wins)
15. News organisation’s agenda (stories that fit the news organization’s commercial or political agenda)

When bad news is good news

Oscar Wilde’s quip is relevant to public relations.

If we only seek to promote good news, the rules around news values suggest that we’re destined to achieve very little. But if we actively court bad news we’re more likely to succeed.

Take this case study example. Imagine spending 16 years promoting the English town of Derby as a tourist destination only to find it’s been voted as the worst city in the UK to visit. Surely you’d want to hide your head in shame. But the more considered response was to treat this as an opportunity for a grown-up discussion with journalists and a chance to delve beyond the headline. Sometimes in public relations, not being talked about is indeed worse than being talked about.

Andy Green advocates turning vices into virtues by using the seven deadly sins as a starting point for creative thinking. If you can appeal to at least one of lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride you have a chance of succeeding with your news.

Writing news releases: tips for success

A news release is a structured document that follows certain rules and patterns. It involves a technique that is hard for beginners to learn – but which is easily mastered by artificial intelligence.

Historically, this was the key document in public relations at a time when PR was for many almost indistinguishable from media relations.

Think like a journalist

So what are the – often unwritten – rules of news release writing? They are mostly drawn from the principles taught to trainee journalists.

• Keep it concise and newsworthy. The news release uses the language of a news story. That means short words, short sentences and short paragraphs. It should preferably be written in the past tense since it’s describing news – an event that has happened. Headlines by contrast are written in the present tense which makes the news appear fresh.
• It should be written objectively (companies should be described as ‘it’ or ‘they’, not ‘we’ and ‘our’) though the essential inclusion of a quotation from a named expert gives an opportunity to include some more colourful language informed by opinion.
• It uses the structure of a news story known as the inverted pyramid (with the most important element of the story coming first, followed by the next most important and so on until the information is no longer essential to the story).
• Does your press release answer the “who, what, where, when, why and how” questions?
• Can you use data to support your story? Of course sometimes a new piece of interesting data may be the story itself.
• It should contain a date (or publication date if an embargo is specified). ‘For immediate release’ is no longer required, though it existed to distinguish a news release that could be used immediately from one that was embargoed until a specified date and time in the future.
• It should provide contact information to help a journalist to do their job.
• ‘Ends’ is no longer obligatory but it’s a useful reminder that your release should be as short as possible.
• It can include notes to editors, which is where you can add background information and links to sources. The term “boiler plate” is often given to a standard paragraph that describes a company or product and can be added here.

Using quotes in press releases

Objective, adjective-free news can seem austere and it will be lacking in colour and personality. Inject these by allowing a human to express an opinion about the news. But do try to retain the ‘outside in’ perspective, otherwise all your PR quotations will begin:

‘We are delighted…’

You write this because you’re asking the wrong question. Rather than asking what the company thinks of its announcement, ask what the announcement means to the groups affected. So a car company announcing an electric car could say:

‘This model will mean cleaner and safer air in our cities as well as lower running costs for drivers.’

So always try to include at least one quotation, and say who it’s from (name and title). Journalists may not lift your quotation, but they may ask to speak to the spokesperson. Remember that the purpose of a news release is not to appear word-for-word in the media, but to help a journalist to do their job.

Press releases and AI – opportunities and pitfalls

All of this takes some time for newcomers as these are principles that need to be acquired and skills that need to be practised.

Yet it’s just the sort of task that artificial intelligence has effortlessly mastered.

 Here’s a news release writing challenge.

Write a news release from UK government department HM Treasury announcing the abolition of inheritance tax from the 2026 tax year.

University students, in my experience, would dislike this assignment and find it difficult. They would struggle with writing from the perspective of a government department and they would have a much lower awareness of and interest in inheritance tax than their parents and grandparents. The concept of a tax year would be alien to them. We wouldn’t expect many to produce a workable version if given an hour to draft this.

An AI chatbot produced this version in seconds. No protest. No problem.

HM Treasury News Release

HM Treasury Announces Abolition of Inheritance Tax Starting 2026

London, United Kingdom – 25 November 2024 – HM Treasury today announced a landmark policy change that will see the abolition of inheritance tax from the 2026 tax year. This transformative decision aims to simplify the tax system and provide significant financial relief to families across the United Kingdom.

From April 2026, estates passed down to heirs will no longer be subject to the current 40% inheritance tax. The policy shift is designed to encourage wealth accumulation and intergenerational wealth transfer, ensuring that more families can benefit from the assets built over a lifetime without the burden of substantial tax liabilities.

Key Points of the Announcement:

• Abolition Date: The inheritance tax will be abolished starting from the 2026/27 tax year.
• Financial Relief: Families will no longer face the prospect of paying 40% inheritance tax on estates above the current threshold.
• Economic Impact: The abolition is expected to boost consumer confidence and stimulate economic activity as more wealth is retained within families.

Chancellor of the Exchequer, [Name], commented: “This is a historic step for the UK, reflecting our commitment to ensuring that hardworking families can pass on their legacy without the looming worry of inheritance tax. By removing this tax, we are allowing more families to build and transfer wealth, promoting economic stability and growth.”

The decision has been welcomed by financial advisors and the general public, who have long advocated for a more equitable approach to estate taxation. The abolition of inheritance tax is seen as a move that will foster greater financial security and support for future generations.

For further information, please contact: John Smith Press Office HM Treasury Email: [email protected] Phone: +44 20 7270 1234

Ends

So let’s assess this version.

It follows the rules, though not always UK rules: the use of a dateline (London, United Kingdom – 25 November 2024) follows the US convention though the date is in UK rather than US format (day-month rather than month-day).

The AI release uses ‘advisors’ whereas the more usual UK English spelling is ‘advisers’, though I accept this is a fine judgement/judgment call.

The additions to my very sparse briefing are useful. The first sentence of the leading paragraph answers ‘what’ and the second sentence explains ‘so what’. I consider that a model of best practice.

AI has worked out that a tax year starts in April (others will observe that this has the feel of an April Fool’s Day announcement).

The three bullet points around abolition date, financial relief and economic impact are helpful. I could envisage these given to ministers preparing for the media round to explain this new policy.

It is appropriate to quote the Chancellor of the Exchequer in an HM Treasury announcement though I’m surprised the AI chatbot did not add in her name, Rachel Reeves. In a quirk of the unwritten British constitution, the Prime Minister is also First Lord of the Treasury, so should Sir Keir Starmer have put his name to an announcement of this significance? On balance, the obvious choice, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, is also the right choice because by recent Labour Party convention the Chancellor leads on questions of domestic policy.

But she’d need to explain this huge policy U-turn in her statement; as usual the AI has gone for something rather bland here. Yes, this policy would enable wealth to pass down the generations, but how would this further the objective to deliver a more equal society?; what would the reduced tax mean for the funding of public services?

But those are questions of policy. As a classroom exercise in news release writing, we’d struggle to fault it.

Yet we can see several risks in this startling example of AI’s proficiency.

How would the student or young practitioner ever get to learn the rules of news release writing when it’s so much easier to turn to AI?

And since AI is so proficient, how would the practitioner know to compensate for its blind spots (I’ve noted one or two above)? There is a danger that people will become less skilled as AI becomes more proficient, which will only hasten the day so many ‘white collar’ roles become obsolete.

And how can PR teams continue to justify time-based fees when the AI produces this in next to no time and at no additional cost (we used Copilot for this exercise which is effectively free with a Microsoft 365 subscription)?

News releases: mistakes to avoid

• Trying to dress something up as news when it isn’t
• Using company jargon and acronyms
• Hiding the real story in the third paragraph!
• Being economical with the truth
• Using a scatter gun approach to distribution – intelligent targeting is the way to go

Press/news release writing style and tips

Does your organisation or client have a ‘house style’? If so, make sure you check it out and use the right terminology for things (while avoiding jargon!). If it doesn’t  – then think about creating one.

Style tips:

• Is it singular or plural? An organisation is always singular, meaning for example, that you use ‘has’ not ‘have’. ‘The company has launched a new product.’
• Upper or lower case? Don’t use an upper-case letter if it isn’t needed. This can be something to provide guidance on in your style guide.
• The usual rule is one to ten in words, 11 and above in digits.
• Quote marks. If you split a quote across two paragraphs you start and end the second para with quote marks but you don’t put one at the end of the first (no idea why!).

A compelling headline

The headline needs to capture attention. Make it different to the content of the first paragraph but still relevant to the story.

Get the timing right

News is usually a 24-hour operation, but nevertheless there will be key times when editors and journalists get together to plan the stories of the day. Part of your media relations strategy should be to get to know when a media outlet needs your story – for example when you want something to appear in the UK Sunday papers, or the Christmas print edition of a magazine. Factor these timescales into your planning.

There isn’t any one time of the week to send out a press release – it depends entirely on the media you are targeting.

Offering an exclusive

News organisations operate in a competitive media ecosystem. This means they’re in competition to be first with the news.

This is one asset the PR practitioner has when deciding on timing and distribution for their news release.

Should it go to all possible media contacts, and risk being picked up by none?

Or should you seek to negotiate exclusively with one media outlet to give them the news first, knowing that this may boost its follow-up appeal to others?

There is a third option. To selectively release your news to a few good contacts, perhaps starting with the local and specialist trade media that know the organisation well. National newspaper correspondents often pick up on local or trade stories and may proactively follow up as a result. This makes media relations less of a hard sell – though it does leave you with no control over the outcome.

Using an embargo – do’s and don’ts

An embargo is different from an exclusive. It’s when you issue the news release now but on the understanding that news should not be published or reported until a specified time in the future.

It’s tempting to view this as a device to boost the apparent newsworthiness of your PR story. Please resist this. There needs to be a credible reason for the embargo.

Perhaps the news relates to a major speech to be given by a CEO next week. The speech will have been written; the venue organised. So by releasing excerpts early you are enabling a journalist to decide whether to schedule this and give it some attention.

But there are risks. There are many reasons why a planned speech may not in the event be delivered (health issues, transport disruption, a terrorist incident etc) so any such embargoed release referring to a speech should be accompanied by the advice to ‘Check against delivery’.

Then there is the risk that the journalist breaks the embargo, so keen are they to get ahead of their competition. This leaves you with a problem: you can ‘punish’ them by refusing further exclusives but you won’t want to close down the relationship entirely as that would be counter-productive.

It’s a reminder that there’s always a power struggle in media relations, and it’s rare for the PR person to hold all the cards.

The exception is celebrity publicity where demand for access is so great that PR teams have been known to demand the right to approve copy and photography before publication – and journalists have been known to agree to these terms. In any other sectors these demands would be vigorously rejected and would be considered a major intrusion into the freedom of the press.

To follow up or not?

Chasing up journalists to see if they received your press release is considered by many to be a no-no. Put yourself in the journalist’s shoes. Their inbox is probably crammed with releases that are mistimed and/or irrelevant to them and their audience – can we really expect them to wade through their inbox looking for ours?

Another similar conundrum is asking the journalist for a link to your website or that of your client.

Backlink is the term used in SEO to describe a link into a website (also known as an inbound link). The more authority the linking site has, the better for your page or site. Backlinks are important because they act as a ‘vote of confidence’ or third-party endorsement of a site or page. Media relations activity, which was once all about the cutting, is now as much about the value of backlinks from a trusted media website to your site.

There is no harm in asking but calling up to ask specifically is probably quite annoying. Far better to give the journalist a good reason to include a link. This might be to a full report or some additional data for example.

So think really carefully. If you know the journalist and you’re confident the story is right for them they will probably appreciate a heads up. And if the reason for including a link is strong enough you may well get one! 

Selecting the right media channels

Understand your target audience: You select media channels according to which stakeholder groups you’re targeting. Politicians, regulators, investors, B2B customers and B2C consumers may each be influenced by different channels and publications. So you not only need to research your media channels, but you need to research and update your stakeholder analysis.

Consider influencers too. And we don’t just mean social media influencers, but those in a position to influence the decision makers. So you may seek to influence a government minister through a backbench MP and a think tank; a CEO through their spouse as well as their trusted deputies; a B2B commercial decision maker through the technical adviser they rely on.

Media strategies are rarely simple and straightforward but necessarily complex and multi-faceted.

Media list building

There are many agencies who can do this for you, but you can also build your own lists.

The first rule is to know the media you are targeting. You need to read, watch or listen. Which journalists are talking about your subject area? What sort of stories do they like to cover?

If you meet with a journalist, you should be super familiar with their content, attitudes and interests. This will also help you target stories to them.

Consuming media yourself, and with an analytical eye, is an important foundation of good media relations.

Distributing your news story

You may have built your own distribution lists and understand how your key journalists prefer to receive stories – that’s great.

If not, there are many services who hold media databases and will distribute your press release for you. Many will also help you to target influencers and MPs. Some will include information about how a journalist likes to be approached.

Tracking and measuring success

We don’t always understand how public relations works, but we do sense that it does work – and we know that organisations in the public, private and not-for-profit sectors value it enough to pay for it. It’s rarely one thing alone that brings success because it’s easy to ignore or downplay one story in the media, or one email in our inbox.

But when we simultaneously hear about something in the media, and by word of mouth recommendation, and this is followed up by a mailshot or email then most of us begin to pay attention.

Making people aware of something – publicity – is part of the process. But it’s rarely the end goal.

Usually, we want to make people aware of something in the hope they might change their mind about it and ultimately change their behaviour – and sustain this behaviour change over time.

Each of these steps is increasingly hard. Take the example of the public health campaigns to encourage people to quit smoking – a campaign that’s been running for over 60 years. It’s hard to imagine an adult who is not aware of the Smoking Kills message.

Yet what caused so many to quit smoking? Was it the various health awareness campaigns? Can we attribute this relative success to PR?

Or was it the ban on tobacco advertising and sports sponsorship? Was it the ban on smoking in public places? Or was it the increasingly punitive levels of taxation imposed on a packet of cigarettes? Or the availability of smoke-free nicotine in the form of patches, gum, or vapes that has helped habitual smokers to quit.

For the Department of Health, success is success and it won’t matter which levers proved most successful.

But if you’re responsible for a budget for PR and comms, you will be exercised by this question of attribution because you need evidence of success in order to defend or increase your budget.

Strategic media relations is not about counting coverage; it’s certainly not about spurious measures such as advertising value equivalency (AVE). It’s about understanding the strategic role of comms in helping organisations to achieve their objectives by getting people to change their minds and change their behaviour. And being able to prove that your comms inputs (such as meetings held, journalists briefed, news releases issued) led to identifiable outputs (attendance at events, coverage in the media) which in turn led to measurable outcomes (whether through awareness, or attitude change and ultimately sustained behaviour change) and ultimately impact.

This process and this terminology (of inputs, outputs and outcomes) is well established. It’s embedded in AMEC’s integrated evaluation framework; it’s described by author Mark Weiner as ‘the PR continuum’ and by academic Jim Macnarama as a ‘program logic model’ – see below.

It’s best practice, but is it widely practised?

Jim Macnamara’s dissected program logic model, pictured here, describes the public relations process and the role of media publicity as a flow diagram.

Following on from planning comes the production and distribution of information or content. As a consequence of this activity we hope audiences or publics will pay some attention, show some engagement and change in some way (either through increased awareness, or changing their attitude or behaviour).

Why do we want this? We are aiming for results – a positive impact on our business or on society.

It should be clear from this diagram that media relations is not an end in itself (other than by achieving improved relationships with journalists) but rather a means to an end. As a result, media measurement, though easy, is unimportant. Leaders do not expect spurious data about the ‘opportunities to see’ a message in the media. They expect evidence that the campaign or activity has led to some measurable impact.

Crisis communication and handling negative press

If the news release is becoming less effective in promotional contexts, then it’s still a regulatory requirement in some sectors and there’s still a demand for regularly updated written statements in the context of a crisis situation.

Crisis and risk communication expert and IBM veteran Philippe Borremans has published a Kindle ebook Mastering Crisis Communication with ChatGPT, reviewed here at PR Academy Insights.

He’s keen to stress that no AI should be relied on to replace human judgement but that it can and should be used to assist in the planning process.

A corporate communicator will be under pressure in a crisis and the ability of AI to remain unflustered can make it a valued assistant.

Here are some of the ways Philippe Borremans suggests using ChatGPT (note that the book was published in 2023 using the free version of ChatGPT: AI tools have become even more sophisticated since then). AI can be used:

• To generate fictional crisis scenarios
• For ‘red teaming’ – anticipating future risks and developing plans against them
• To draft a crisis plan
• To prepare standard operating procedures (SOPs) in different scenarios
• To draft template documents for customisation in a crisis
• To ‘act as an expert’ to create reactive statements
• For ‘human optimisation’ of these reactive statements (for example to optimise the statement for internal audiences)
• To translate statements into languages other than English (or between US and UK English versions)
• To ‘act as a journalist’ to brainstorm some tough questions
• To draft answers for Q&A documents
• To summarise large amounts of textual data from various sources
• To detect the sentiment of media reports (positive, neutral, negative)

Handling the media in a crisis: tips from a journalist

As part of our Crisis Hub webinar series, journalist Simon Read joined our CIPR Crisis Communication Diploma Chris Tucker for a webinar to discuss:

• What the media want in a crisis
• How we balance the needs of stakeholders and the organisation with that of the media
• How we can prepare
• The best spokesperson and how to support them
• Is “off the record” ever a good idea?

Watch webinar: Handling The Media In A Crisis with Journalist Simon Read

Read webinar transcript

Media relations and interpersonal skills

Working in media relations places you in the role of an intermediary. You need to explain your client or employer to the media, but also to understand the needs of the journalist so that you can explain these to your employer.

Conceptually, it’s similar to the role of an ambassador, representing their nation yet embedded in a foreign country and acting as an intermediary, as a two-way conduit of information.

The test of your skill as a media relations practitioner is whether the journalist considers you useful, judged by whether they turn to you for information and are in turn willing to respond to your emails and answer your phone calls.

One very practical test is whether you can provide journalists with access to those with most power in the organisation such as the chief executive officer. CEOs have very full diaries, and you will need to make a persuasive case as to why a request for a media interview should be prioritised, especially as media interview requests tend to come at short notice, whereas other stakeholder meetings are scheduled well in advance – and may be considered less risky by the CEO.

It isn’t easy. There will be times when you will want to provide some information requested by a journalist, but may face internal barriers (legal advisers may be arguing for silence, for example).

In this situation, who are you going to disappoint? Your media contact or your employer?

You may feel there are ethical reasons you should disclose the information, notwithstanding the legal advice to keep it confidential. You may feel in some circumstances the need to act as a whistleblower. But there may also be a practical consideration.

If you were in a job for life, then you would be wise to put your employer first every time. That’s because your relationship with your employer will be more important and more enduring that your relationship with any journalist.

In practice, though, looked at across a whole career we might view our current role as likely to endure for three to five years and this is probably a shorter length of time than many specialist correspondents stay in their roles. (Listening to Simon Calder talking on the radio about airline pricing reminds us that we’ve heard his voice dating back to the time the Independent was a print newspaper. Indeed, he started as the Independent’s travel correspondent in 1994, 30 years ago.)

Looked at like this, we should prioritise our relationships with key media contact because these may prove a more valuable longer-term asset to us – and therefore to our employers.

How do the most successful practitioners navigate the challenge of meeting the demands of their employer while keeping journalists happy?

This is entirely consistent with the role of the ambassador who needs to retain the trust of both sides and keep channels of communication open and who would view the outbreak of hostility as a failure of diplomacy.

 Effective pitching techniques

Maud Davis who leads our CIPR PR Certificate course, summarises much of the advice above into these top tips for crafting the perfect pitch.

Crafting the perfect pitch.

• Look at past media coverage to find out what angles have worked for you and how journalists have interpreted stories you issued.
• Read, watch and listen to the media you are targeting to discover what they are covering. Set up alerts to get notified every time ‘dream’ journalists publish new content  to better understand topics being covered now and the type of content journalists are using.
• Define your offer by thinking about what value the media can get out of running the story. If the pitch is about a launch, event or new research, make it relevant to the media you are targeting and if you can fit it in with what is trending or topical – even better. If the offer is commentary or a discussion topic, find the tension and choose a credible ‘expert’ as the voice. For case studies, highlight the human interest.
• Decide if you are prepared to offer an exclusive for top tier media. This will dictate who you pitch to and when.
• Grab attention upfront – if you have a shocking fact or figure, use it in the subject line or header.
• Explain how you can help the journalist run the story you are pitching and have your assets signed off and ready to go, whether that’s photography, graphics, B-roll film, audio, case studies or spokespeople.
• Monitor journalists call-outs, such as #journorequest, for information. And have ready prepared material at hand so that you can respond quickly.

Timing and frequency of pitches

Find the perfect time – what are their lead times, deadlines and when it the best time to catch them.  Bear in mind that some journalists don’t want to be pitched to outside office hours and for some that might mean that they don’t want to receive DMs on a Monday or after 6pm. Every editorial desk is different but for news, pitch early in the day and for embargoed stories, allow a few days’ notice.

Every editorial sector has its cyclical highs and lows.  Avoid the highs such as Election Day, unless your story is relevant. Don’t forget about the downtime in a journalist’s editorial calendar, such as between Christmas and New Year when newsrooms will value relevant stories that are ready to go and when features will be looking to file their content in advance.

Conclusion

Working with journalists can be really rewarding – its brilliant to see your story appear in print or hear it broadcast.

Its also brilliant when a journalist knows that they can call you because they need a better understanding of a situation and know that they trust you to help them (see the quote from Alan White at the start of this briefing). When that happens, you know you’ve nailed it!

Good media relations is about relationships, knowing what makes news and knowing when media relations is going to be right for your PR campaign.

And finally, it is about understanding that media relations needs to ‘shift the dial’ all the coverage you could dream of isn’t worth a toffee if your stakeholder outcome isn’t met!