You just launched a product your company has been planning for the past year, and you can’t understand why Fast Company hasn’t covered the launch. Perhaps they missed out on a good story, despite the PR team’s relentless and creative pitching. Or maybe the “story” was best suited for the internal newsletter.
So, how do you know which one it is? What are the makings of a media-worthy story?
Think like a reader, not a proud parent
First, step back and move outside the role of company champion. Spend some time reading the media outlet before pitching it to better understand what they look for in a story. What makes their stories compelling? Likely they’re timely, insightful, maybe offer a bit of intrigue.
“Why is having our story published important to us?” is not the central question. The one you need to ask is, “Why would anyone else care?”
Spoiler alert: Because we do it better than others is never a good reason. Subjectivity is rarely a pillar on which to build a story.
Keep in mind you’re not alone. Journalists are strapped for time and they receive dozens of story ideas each week. There are lots of great organizations doing interesting work. Important work. They’re improving existing solutions to age-old problems, merging with other organizations to scale, raising capital, and chipping away at real issues. That all matters. But not every event will secure media attention for your organization.
To do that, you have to go deeper. And sometimes wider.
The best stories center on a problem, not the solution
The story you pitch might have a better chance of landing if you’re not the only character in it. Have a story arc that shines a powerful light on the issue and then the novel solution to fix it. Too often, companies want coverage of their product without some of the elements that make it a story worth reading. Reporters are interested in the layers:
- Why’s this problem so tough to solve? And how does it impact my audience?
- Why hasn’t anyone solved it?
- What are the problems that stand in the way of success, and how do you plan on conquering them?
Being open to talk about the challenges you face as a company doesn’t weaken your story. Or your company. It strengthens them. It signals credibility and gives journalists room to do their job. They need to be stimulated, have their curiosity piqued, and they need to know they’re not being spun. The MuckRack State of Journalism survey tells us that 86% of journalists reject a story because it’s irrelevant to their audience and 71% say no because the pitch was too self-promotional. So, remember, it’s not about you: it’s about the audience and the problem at their doorstep.
Find the tension
The secret ingredient in any legitimate news story is a level of conflict. Without any tension, you have a feature that may interest the industry trade but not the Wall Street Journal.
Tension can take different shapes: a problem that refuses to be solved, a market not behaving as expected, an industry assumption challenged, or a company that has to confront the limits of its own model. What matters – and prompts interest from journalists – is that something is at stake and unresolved.
Reporters answer to their editors and readers who expect them to present a full picture. In addition to a properly framed context, complexity and discomfort somewhere in the piece can help them get there. Tension lets a reporter explore both promise and limitation.
When companies want to pitch the story without those elements, they’re baking bread without yeast. It’s not going to work. Coverage becomes shallow or doesn’t happen at all. When they embrace it, stories gain depth, credibility, and staying power.
Ultimately, media attention isn’t about perfection. It is about significance. Which almost always comes from the friction between ambition and reality.