I’m subjecting the good staff and clientele of the Venture Café to open office hours today. That means I’ll be at Cambridge Innovation Center on a warm Thursday afternoon, trying to provide lucid advice for startups on how to handle media exposure.
To accomplish this goal, I’ll be ignoring the half-keg of excellent beer I know they’ll have on tap. In case I fall short of plan, here, at least, are a few coherent thoughts.
Understanding the media is simple if you understand that journalists (the good ones) are mostly trying to do one thing: be valuable to our readers. Readers are usually also sources, and the ones who know the value of a good story are usually the best sources. Good stories beget tips that lead to more good stories.
So, if you’re pitching a story to a news person, imagine yourself reading it, instead of pitching it, and ask yourself: ‘Would I find this valuable?’
OK, the relationship between journalists and information is a little more complicated than that. We don’t always seek to “add value,” as the biz-speak chestnut goes. Sometimes our goal is to remove it.
Like anything, the value of information is based on supply and demand. A company’s announcement has little value in today’s media world, because it’s immediately over-supplied via search and any number of outlets. But a news person may bring something rare to add – analysis, perspective or sources that come from knowing the subject area. Or, he or she may combine pieces of information that alone are worth little, like the Miami Herald did today with disparate accounts of scams related to the gulf oil spill.
These stories are good. But you do a journalist better when you offer information that only a few people know about. When good information is scarce, and therefore valuable, a journalist’s job is to remove some of its value, by supplying it broadly to readers. ESPN may have accomplished this today, with a report that NBA superstar Lebron James is leaning toward signing with the Miami Heat. Let’s say you are a front-office employee at any NBA franchise. Knowing Lebron’s plans yesterday, you had some valuable knowledge. Today, after 2,000 online news organizations picked up Chris Broussard’s report, it’s the baseline for cube farm trash talk.
If you’d like to talk further, drop by the Venture Café today between 3 and 6 p.m. MassChallenge will also be there, along with Boston World Partnerships.
Posted by Galen Moore
Tags: media, open office hours, pr, Startups, venture cafe
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