To Make News, Solve a Reporter's Six Basic Problems
By Rusty Cawley

How to use the News media to attract customers or to generate publicity?

Like anyone at any job, every journalist faces the same
basic set of challenges every day. For the journalist,
there are six of these fundamental problems.

They are:

1. Finding a Story - The reporter's job is to uncover
stories, preferably ones that the competition is
missing. Most reporters must meet an unwritten quota of
stories within a given period.

Start Website Business Properly - Learn Here!

At a daily newspaper, the reporter may be required to
turn in one 800-word story, plus a handful of briefs,
every day. At a business journal, the quota may be
three 800-word stories per week, plus an industry
column, plus a brief. At a television station, the
quota may be five news segments per week, plus a
weekend feature.

The formula changes from outlet to outlet, from medium
to medium. But be assured, every reporter has to meet
certain expectations to keep any job, and this includes
producing a given number of stories during a certain
period of time.

2. Gathering the Facts - It's not enough to have a story to tell. The reporter must also have the facts that support the story. This is known as the 5W's and the H: who, what, when, where, why and how. Without the facts, it becomes impossible to tell the story.

By nature and by training, reporters are generalists.
Few have specialized knowledge, other than how to
convert a set of facts into an interesting, intriguing
news story.

As a result, every reporter is like a graduate student
who is cramming for a new exam every day. Reporters
must learn the essential facts, arrange them into a
coherent stream and master them long enough to sound as
if they are experts.

3. Choosing the Angle - Once reporters have the story
and the facts, they must make a crucial decision. What
is the angle they will take to writing the story?

The angle is simply the format that the reporter will
use to arrange the story into something the audience
can recognize and understand.

Is this a hard news story for the front page? Is it a
feature for the Sunday family section? Is it a brief?
Is it a six-part investigation?

These are just a few of the angles that the reporter
might take to any story.

The most common angle is the hard news angle. Something
important has happened and here are the facts, arranged
in order of importance. The vast majority of stories
you will read, see or hear are told with the hard news
angle. The hard news story is based in immediacy. It
must be told now, or it will lose its value to audience.

The second most common angle is the feature, which
tends to de-emphasize the timeliness of the story,
preferring to focus on some other interesting aspect,
such a human-interest angle. A feature is not based in
immediacy. It can hold for a few days or even weeks
without losing its impact.

Then there are the many, many minor angles, such as the
interpretive piece or the consumer investigation. Don't
worry about these. Just learn to recognize a hard news
story from a feature story.

4. Identifying the Peg - A news story is different from
an entry in an encyclopaedia. Both contain facts. But
the news requires a reason for the facts to be told.

That reason is the peg.

Don't confuse the peg with the angle. The angle is the
reporter's approach to the story. The peg is the
reporter's excuse for telling the story.

For example, virtually any encyclopaedia contains an
entry about tobacco. But the reporter can't pick up
this entry and report it as news. The facts are there,
but not the peg.

However, if this morning a star athlete announces he
has developed a cancer from using chewing tobacco,
suddenly the reporter has a peg - a reason - to write
about tobacco.

Every news story, no matter the angle, must have a peg.
Without it, there is no reason to write the story.

5. Making the Deadline - Every journalist is racing
against time.

Start Website Business Properly - Learn Here!

The TV news reporter is fighting a 3 p.m. deadline for
the 6 p.m. broadcast. The magazine reporter must meet a
deadline three months from now. The Web reporter faces
a new deadline every few minutes.

The deadline is just that: The last possible moment
when the reporter is allowed to file a story for print,
broadcast or transmission.

Reporters who miss their deadlines lose their jobs.

6. Satisfying the Boss - Every story must interest at
least two people before it sees light. Those people are
the reporter and his editor.

If either one rejects the story, it is dead.

The Boss also sets the criteria for the reporters: What
they can cover, what they can pursue, how they can
write their stories, what angles they can take, which
pegs are acceptable and when the deadline is due.

Make no mistake. You may never see The Boss. But the
world of journalism is ruled by the editor, not the
reporter.

These are the problems that face every reporter: Story,
facts, angle, peg, deadline and editors.

The PR Rainmaker knows: If you can help reporters solve
their problems, you can become their best friend. And
therein lies great opportunity.

Rusty Cawley is a 20-year veteran journalist who now
coaches executives, entrepreneurs and professionals on
using the news media to attract customers and to
advance ideas. For your free copy of the hot new ebook
"PR Rainmaker," please visit www.prrainmaker.com right
now.