People are the main focus of every news story.
Our interest is in a person (celebrity or real life story) or groups of people (back pain sufferer or under 5’s). When you are promoting your company’s goods, services or the product itself is never newsworthy. Importantly it is how the product affects people or groups of people that is important.
As a company the instant reaction is to try and push the company’s name ‘out there’ to build brand and reputation, company promotional copy is not news. To make the news the story must be people centred and lead with the most newsworthy aspect of the story. What fascinates and drives the Managing Director probably won’t have mass appeal.
Journalists write stories to inform and entertain their readers they are not interested in promoting companies. How does your product affect the readers? What does your product do for the nation, the local community or the individual?
The story must be relevant to the reader. A PR professional can give you advice on publications that might be interested in your news. Importantly a good PR professional will be honest and tell you when a story idea is not newsworthy. If you focus on what has changed and how this affects people then a news story could be written.
To make the news your story has to be newsworthy. The definition of newsworthy is ‘Interesting enough to be reported as news’
Newsworthy
Change – News reports on change, something must have happened
Unusual – Is it strange, quirky or unexpected
Exciting – A sexy subject or celebrity will always be news
People – Think about how your product affects people or groups of people
Readers – It must be suitable and interesting for the publications readers
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