If you want to hire someone to get you media exposure, a logical question is: what journalists do you know who cover our space?
It’s a logical question, but it’s not a good question. A better question would be how well do you know the media outlets where we want to be covered?
Sure, we know lots of journalists. But the percentage of them that stay put long enough to capitalize on our familiarity gets diminished every day. They leave journalism. They get assigned another beat. They get a job elsewhere. They are a victim of a mass layoff.
The real skill you are looking for is someone who knows the ins and outs, nooks and crannies of a media outlet to find the right journalist for your story.
The very simplified Bloomberg organizational chart is instructive. If you are trying to pitch Bloomberg TV and getting nowhere, Bloomberg Live Streams is your next best, if not better shot, and the beat reporter that you know in Bloomberg Markets who covers industrials, can tell you which producer on Live Stream you need to reach out to, even if your pitch is healthcare. With more than 2,700 journalists and producers, knowing the exact right one is unlikely, and the true skillset is knowing how to work within the organization to find the exact right contact.
Once you begin work with a media outlet instead of a specific journalist, there are many more avenues of approach, and ultimately, a higher hit rate on placing stories.
