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Do-it-yourselfers and P.R. folks, this is for you:

In the April 2, 2007 issue of Bulldog Reporter’s Daily Dog e-newsletter, I read a great article by Dave Lieber, who writes The Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s popular “Watchdog” column.

The title of the article in the Daily Dog is “Storytelling Secrets for PR:  Skip the 5Ws and Pitch Heroes Overcoming Challenges for Ink”.

Here are my two favorite points:

• Pitch obstacles and challenges, not “everything’s great” pitches. “Nothing gets a reporters’ attention—or a reader’s—like a challenge or obstacle to be overcome,” says Lieber. “We’re hard wired to hear about the hard times—that’s what ’stories’ are: people rising to the occasion. Pitch around those elements, not ‘feel good’ announcements.”
• Practice “stop, search, send”— Do your research. Use Google.  “If I were pitching you at Bulldog Reporter, I would go to your site, find your byline by using your search function—and then I’d read the last twenty or so stories you wrote. After that, I’d call and reference a story you did last week,” Lieber continues. “If that didn’t give me enough, I would ‘GoogleNews’ you and then search the blogosphere to see if you had a blog or MySpace [site]. Finding a journalist’s blog can be a great way in,” he says.