Manipulating the Media –
Channeling Your Document to Particular Personnel

Imagine you’re sitting at your editor’s desk, wearing your editor’s hat, dreading the trip through the onslaught of unsolicited materials, including press releases from all four corners of the world. Now, you know the competition is fierce for a spot in your publication, and you hate the thought of having to pick and choose.

Not hardly. A real editor has the ability to swiftly peruse his stack of incoming mail, rapidly discarding anything that doesn’t fit the general criteria he looks for in a newsworthy item.

Eventually, the pile of crumpled papers surrounding the trash bin outnumbers the one on his desk, and he smiles with pleasure at the thought of being almost finished, nary a thought in his mind about the poor schmuck who worked day and night on his press release in the hopes that his idea would be printed in today’s edition.

The editor is human, regardless of the rumors that say otherwise, and he appreciates hard work and dedication similar to the ethics he puts into his own work. Therefore, when he opens up your letter and sees it addressed to Joe Smith, the editor whose job he took eight months ago, he’s not happy with you from the beginning.

His eyes will roll, and he may guffaw at the lack of research you’ve done in seeing who to address your press release to. But more importantly, he’s going to attach a label of “sloppy” to your work, because he’s wondering – “If this person can’t even get my name right, which appears on the masthead of yesterday’s edition, how can I trust that he’s taken the time to verify his facts and source credentials?”

He can’t. So off you fly, crumpled in a ball the size of a small apple, rebounding off the wall of his office, directly into the trash bin. And don’t reserve any hope that your paper might miss the bin, and wind up on the floor, so that he might later rethink his hasty decision and revisit your work. It’s not going to happen.

Newspapers are perhaps the easiest source to research when sending your press release in for publication. Open up the latest edition, and somewhere in a long, vertical stream, are the most prominent contacts you’ll need when you fill out the envelope to send your news.

If, perchance, the masthead has been ripped from the rest of the paper, a simple phone call to the main number will result in a speedy delivery of the proper name and address to send your press release.

But before you hang up with the paper, get the correct spelling of your contact’s name. And if it’s Sam, Chris, Alex, or some other gender-neutral name, make sure you know if the person is male or female, in case your cover needs to be addressed to Mr. or Ms.

For a newspaper, you’ll either be asked to send your press release to a department, in which case you won’t have a specific person to target. Or, there will be one or more staff members assigned with the duty of receiving and processing your press release.

When you send in your item to the correct personnel, refrain from calling him to see if he got your letter, or whether or not he thinks they might use it in the next edition. If he works at a paper, chances are, he’s busy all of the time, so your call will not endear you to him, but rather, make him intolerant of you. He’ll be more impressed if you control your urge to contact him and harass him about your document.

Also, don’t send in more than one version of your document to the publication. This means two things:

1) Don’t rewrite a “better” version and mail several samples to the paper. And,
2) Don’t send your submission in five different ways, by hand delivering it, emailing it, snail mailing it, faxing it, and calling it in. Pick one method of delivery and stay with it.

When you address your press release to specific personnel, it’s important to check for the following:

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