How To Pitch a PR Story to a Broadcast Newsroom

This is a guest post by Lisah Silfwer.

How do you pitch a PR story to a broad­cast newsroom?

In this post, I want to give you my best tips on pitch­ing a PR story to a broad­cast newsroom.

I work at TV4, a com­mer­cial nation­al news broad­caster in Sweden. I’m a news anchor, try­ing my best daily to con­vey essen­tial stor­ies as clearly and promptly as pos­sible. It’s chal­len­ging but fun.

For a journ­al­ist, hav­ing a net­work of news sources is valu­able. PR sources are essen­tial, too. But let’s be hon­est: Most journ­al­ists are scep­tic­al of PR stor­ies. Still, as long as you pitch your story well, you should be okay.

Here we go:

How To Pitch a Visual PR Story

Pitching a Weak PR Story is a Bad Idea

Pitching a good story well can be stress­ful. Many good stor­ies are com­pet­ing for atten­tion at the same time. So, don’t make it harder on your­self by pitch­ing a weak story. Keeping your fin­gers crossed and hop­ing for the best isn’t a great strategy. You’re wast­ing both your time and ours.

Boil Your Story Down to One Sentence

Be pre­pared to sum­mar­ise your PR story in one or two sen­tences imme­di­ately. Then, when you con­tact the report­er, you’ll be pre­pared to be brief. If we’re inter­ested, we’ll want to hear everything. But first, the journ­al­ist must under­stand that your story won’t waste valu­able journ­al­ist­ic resources bet­ter spent elsewhere.

Remember That Our Viewers Comes First

A story could be crit­ic­al to your organ­isa­tion. But is it crit­ic­al to our view­ers? If the story isn’t rel­ev­ant for a broad­er audi­ence, maybe there are oth­er more trade-spe­cif­ic media where your story would be more rel­ev­ant. I under­stand that a story could be of the utmost import­ance to a spe­cif­ic organ­isa­tion or even a whole industry. But please remem­ber to tell your story from the per­spect­ive of the news­room’s audience.

There Are Two Sides to Every Story — Even Yours

No report­er with integ­rity will cov­er only one side of a story. And for every good news story out there, someone did­n’t want that story to air. So, who would hate to see your story mak­ing the even­ing news? Just tell us, please and save us a few minutes of research.

Be Prepared to Answer Tough Questions

If your PR story seems inter­est­ing, the TV report­er will prob­ably take the lead and ask uncom­fort­able ques­tions. Uncomfortable ques­tions are a good sign if you want your story to go on air. Ensure you’re pre­pared to give us straight answers instead of stick­ing to pre-writ­ten cor­por­ate state­ments and jargon.

Give Us the Story First (If Possible)

National broad­cast news has a sig­ni­fic­ant impact on soci­ety. We owe it to our view­ers to give them the best journ­al­ist­ic stor­ies daily. As a rule of thumb: If your story is news­worthy, giv­ing us exclus­ive rights should increase your chances.

Make Sure to Prove Your Claims

Journalists must ensure that sources can back all their claims with sub­stan­ti­ated evid­ence. Confirmed inform­a­tion is cru­cial, espe­cially for PR stor­ies; we don’t start dig­ging for evid­ence whenev­er an organ­isa­tion wants us to run its latest PR story. Have doc­u­ment­a­tion ready. Have third-party stat­ist­ics and state­ments ready. Make sure your spokespeople are access­ible. Be pre­pared to sug­gest inde­pend­ent and unbiased experts.

Understand that Broadcasters Must Tell Visual Stories

A broad­cast news­room is going to need to tell stor­ies visu­ally. We need on-cam­era inter­views and state­ments, graph­ics, cam­era foot­age, still frames, loc­a­tion shots etc. We make this work all the time for every story.

About the writer: Lisah Silfwer is a news anchor and journalist.

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