 I love being out in nature and really watching nature shows, and one of the things that always fascinates me is this idea of what scientists call symbiosis, this existence that is mutually beneficial between two parties or two entities, like you see with the rhinoceros and the birds that keep the different bugs off of that rhinoceros, that could be dangerous to it, and of course the rhino protects them from larger predators. You see the same thing in the ocean when you look at sharks and pilot fish that live kind of in coexistence. It's not that they're best friends or whatever, but they recognize that there's some mutual benefit to each other. Again, the shark offers protection for the pilot fish from other larger predators, and the pilot fish help keep dangerous and harmful barnacles, bacteria, different things like that away from the shark, and they scavenge on what the shark eats and that kind of stuff. So all of this is to say that those of us working in public relations, media relations, have sort of the same type of relationship with reporters. Theoretically, ideally this is a relationship that will exist in symbiosis where there's some benefit for everyone. Everyone has their job to do, everyone has a particular perspective probably, but there's some benefit there for both parties theoretically. So that's how we ought to look at our relationship with reporters, and so we want to take a look at how we can then work well with reporters. So what's it look like to work well with reporters for those of us in public relations and media relations, and so there are a few things that we want to recognize and keep in mind when we're dealing with and working with reporters. So first of all, we need to recognize that reporters live life on a deadline. They have deadlines, no matter what kind of media they're in, those deadlines will be different, but they have a deadline. They have a specific time by which they need to complete their article or their report or whatever and be ready for that to go to publication, to go on air, to be posted on their site or whatever. They live life on a deadline. So as media relations folks and public relations people, what can we do about keeping that in mind? Well, first of all, we need to know what the outlet deadlines are. Again, they're going to be different. If you're dealing with a TV reporter, maybe the five o'clock, six o'clock news or whatever is their deadline. If they're a newspaper reporter, maybe a midnight deadline for publication or whatever it is, bearing in mind that they have things they have to do before that to prepare the story. So we need to know what those outlet deadlines are and we shouldn't be throwing things at them right before the deadline. That's not the way to make friends. We need to keep in mind that they have things to do. They have a job to do. So when we keep their deadline in mind and we keep the pacing of the information in mind, how we're releasing that information, it's helpful to reporters. It makes their life easier and certainly they're going to appreciate that more than somebody who just throws things at them right before their deadline and really throws things into confusion in that way. So we need to know what those outlet deadlines are. Then when we know what those are, we can time our releases and our events around that. If we know that there's a deadline for a publication, an outlet that we really want to hit, and they have a deadline for six o'clock that evening, then we don't want to schedule our press conference at six o'clock or even 5.30 or whatever. We want to schedule our release of that news or the news conference, the briefing, whatever we're going to do for a few hours before that, keeping in mind that that will give them time to digest that information, to write it up, to follow up whatever they need to do with other sources, to ask any questions that they might have and still then put everything together in time for their deadline. So we should time releases and events in a way that helps reporters meet the deadlines as best as possible. That doesn't mean we're on the same deadline necessarily. We can make our own decisions, but we need to keep in mind that you catch more flies with honey, right, than with vinegar. So we want to be as helpful as we can in those situations. So we'll time the releases and events that we have around maybe a deadline of a particularly important outlet. We can also take advantage of technology, technology, you know, email, text, those types of things can get information out immediately. And we can send it to the right people and exactly to them to their specific email address, for example, and not just to a general address, but we can make use of the technology that means we can get information out to these people sooner and as quickly as possible. And we can update it much faster and make it available to them in that way. So we can take advantage of technology and help and get that information to them quickly and in the proper format and so forth. So that we can again help them meet their deadlines that will all be helpful in helping them do their jobs more efficiently and more effectively. And we can remember that we need to be equitable. That doesn't mean equal, but we need to be equitable. We need to not be selective about, okay, I'm going to send it to this person three hours before I send it to somebody else because I like them better or whatever. Now, if we're going to send it to the media, we need to send it to the media. Now we can decide what the release time and what time of the event and things like that may not be equally beneficial for everybody. If somebody has a deadline at four o'clock and somebody else has one at eight o'clock, then that other person's going to have four extra hours after that briefing or whatever. So but there's not much we can do about that. That's not our responsibility. Our responsibility is to make the information available as equitably as possible to, you know, to people at the same time in the same way and give them an equal opportunity to have that information at the same time really. So we can be equitable and just keeping all these things in mind that these folks work on a deadline. And so for us to be aware of that and to pay attention to that and not, you know, kind of hold it against them or hold it to our advantage and leverage that to our advantage in any way that's not necessary. But we can keep in mind that they live life on a deadline and we can be respectful of that. We can also keep in mind that journalism now exists in the internet era, that things are different than they were 20, 30 years ago or whatever before people really use the internet and relied on the internet in the same way that we do today. But but journalism exists on the internet era and they take full advantage of that and we can as well. But we need to be aware of different things that are in effect there. First of all, we need to know that socials are fair game. Social media is fair game. Journalists are allowed to browse social media and use information from social media. Now we do need to be we should be aware that the same standards apply for traditional journalists regarding social media that they do for any other news source that they would need to be verified and they shouldn't just grab anything off the internet. We know that not everything on the internet is reliable and journalists know that too. So they need to do their due diligence and follow up and find other sources and support of that and that corroborate that information. But it's traditional journalists. Now you're talking citizen journalists. That's a totally different thing. We'll touch on that in a moment. But but the socials are fair game. If you put something on social media, then expect it to be identified potentially as a news source and a news outlet can use that information. Now the same standards again though apply. They need to find other verification and corroboration for that information. But there's nothing wrong with them using information that they find on the on the internet. So we need to be conscious that one more putting information out that is information that we want out there. We can also do new reporters a huge favor by having a robust online newsroom with just a basics. We can put news releases and things on there. That's certainly very helpful so they can find them in a central location but just even background or information. So information about the history of the organization and the leadership and contacts for not only media relations but if there are subject matter experts that we want to make available to them. We can have that information on there. Information about any publicly disclosed financial information can be helpful. Just information where reporters can go to a central location to find all of this kind of basic information, foundational information. So they don't have to track you down or track somebody down in your office. They can just go to this one spot in your online newsroom to find some of that basic information when they're trying to put together a story. The advantage is of course that's information you can control. You control what's in your online newsroom and what's what's available to the public but it makes it so much easier, makes it much more convenient for a reporter just to be able to go there and get the information they need right away rather than have to jump through a bunch of hoops to get one particular piece of information that's really just kind of basic standard stuff anyway. So use the online newsroom to your advantage but also keep in mind that it's a huge convenience for reporters and can make their life a lot easier. Now I'd like to touch on some tips and things to keep in mind when we're talking about interviews with reporters whether this is a newspaper reporter where it's not going to be video recorded and the person's not on camera or whatever or if it is somebody who's on camera or whatever there are some things we can keep in mind when we're thinking about how we're going to work well with reporters and with the media in these situations. First of all we need to think about media. Medium meaning the channel through which is going to be communicated or the medium for example of are we going to be better sure by allowing interviews with newspapers or podcasts or TV crews or whatever. We need to be selective about the medium in the way that's going to allow us to best choose. Can we go back to these media relations tools? You can refer to a previous video about media relations tools but identifying what's going to most help us achieve our goal in that situation and identify the medium or mediums media that are going to best allow us to do that and we can make selections about interviews based on that and identify who we want to grant interviews to regarding what kind of medium they use for that. We also need to think about interviewer prep that can be very helpful. Now we don't necessarily dictate what questions are going to be asked or things like that but we can provide the interviewer with basic background information about the person they'll be interviewing. What are their credentials? What are their qualifications? What project are they working on? Are we talking about this? Can we give them any information about that? Is there any organizational history or context that we can provide for them or for this program that they're interviewing somebody about? We can provide the interviewer with that information to make sure that they are to help them be prepared for that interview and again save them some time, some energy. Now again they should do the quality reporter or interviewer will do their own work as well but they will gladly accept that information and review it as they prepare for that interview so we can help them make those preparations easier by providing them with some information as well as preparing our own person obviously for that interview and preparing them for what questions might be asked and what topics may be on the table for that. We can also help reporters with any follow-up information. We can make ourselves available and say great and I hope things went well. Please here's my number. Please let me know if there's any further information that we can provide for you or any way we can be of assistance in not trying to write the story or edit the interview for them but just making ourselves available trying to help make their job that much easier and following up with them on any information that we can provide and that when the interview may be released or published or aired or whatever it is. Finally when it comes to interviews we need to know when to say no. We need to be able to identify based on all those things is this a medium that's not appropriate for us or for our story or is this not an audience we're really that interested in reaching and so may not be a good investment of our time and energy to grant this interview or is this an interviewer that you know is just extremely confrontational. They're kind of a gotcha type interviewer and it's not really going to be beneficial in the sense that you don't think there's anything quality that's going to come out of that in terms of reaching your audience. Again we need to make these decisions for ourselves. We're reporters and media outlets are doing that and what interviews are going to be interesting for their audience and determining who they're going to interview based on those factors and we can make those same decisions. Is this an audience that we want to reach? If not then again maybe this isn't the best investment of our time and energy for this particular interview. So it's okay to say no. It's okay to say no if you just don't have enough information on what the topic the person wants to talk about to just decline and say we're not prepared to do interviews on that but we'll certainly be in touch if that time does come and let you know if there's an opportunity there. So we do have the ability to say no and we shouldn't feel bad about that if it's not going to serve our purpose our organization we have a vested interest in that and we don't have a moral obligation to say yes to every interview that comes along. So we need to identify when it's going to be appropriate to say no. But in the long run I always think about that the famous scene from the movie Jerry Maguire when he's begging with with Cuba Gooding Jr. Tom Cruise is begging them help me help you help me do a better job for you right? Well we should help reporters by helping them. I mean we can help ourselves by helping them and providing them with this you know information or providing them with ease of access in terms of the timing of the release of information and so forth. We can establish a better relationship, a better functional working relationship with reporters by keeping their needs and their interests in mind and how they may coincide with our own and our organization's interests right for that symbiotic relationship that is mutually beneficial not asking anybody to compromise their principles or their integrity or forget what their purpose is but those times when those things can be mutually beneficial it works in the best interest of everyone both the media relations, public relations people and the reporters themselves and the media outlets. If you have questions about the working relationship between public relations professionals and reporters or media outlets please feel free to email me I'd love to chat with you about it through email. In the meantime I hope that this gives you some new perspective on the potential of that symbiotic relationship between media relations people and reporters and how that relationship can be beneficial for all sides.