Free Publicity
by Jeff Crilley
Published by Brown Books
Click on book
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at Amazon.com
Reviewed by Connie Anderson
Subtitle: A TV reporter shares the secrets of getting covered on the news
Award-winning journalist with two decades of TV news experience, Jeff Crilley is now on the air in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area. (He was at my hometown Minneapolis/St. Paul station for several years, and I recently heard him speak on this subject).
"I figured it was about time a working journalist explains how news works. In this book, you will learn the secrets to getting coverage from someone on the inside. It's the stuff which they don't teach in the PR courses in college."
Boy, he wasn't kidding.
Assignment editors at major market TV newsrooms quickly (seconds) decide what press release is worthy of coverage. Grab their attention with the headline and opening sentence as that may be all they read. Write like a reporter.
If you want the media to cover you, you have to do something different or controversial. Don't be ordinary. Make sure the idea passes the "who cares" test!
Make your PR release contain visual images, whether the information was sent to a newspaper, radio or TV station. Explain it so the reporter has something vivid to describe.
What are slow news days? Those are the days that you have a better chance of getting noticed by TV news. Crilley describes many stories that filled a slow news day, that otherwise would have never been done.
Crilley does a good job of opening our thinking about what is "news," and how to get our 15 minutes of fame. One chapter is on handling negative publicity, other is on that media feeding frenzy, and how you can tie your story to another story.
Passion, creativity, enthusiasm, controversial--just a few words that describe what you must bring to the table to get some PR looks. I learned a lot.
Armchair Interviews says: Listen and learn from this expert's excellent advice.