Why You Should Pitch News Stories on Weekends
The following article is from Frontier’s White Paper: Media Relations for Not-for-Profits: 7 Simple Steps to More Media Hits by Derek Weiss. This media relations white paper is packed with highly practical ways to help get your not-for-profit’s news pitches out to your local media.
Governments, businesses, and most not-for-profits close their PR departments on Saturday and Sunday. That leaves reporters who work on weekends – often the least experienced and with the fewest connections – scrambling for stories, quotes, and opinions. If they’re lucky, some big news will break. If it doesn’t, you're in the perfect position to pitch your not-for-profit’s story, expertise, or opinion.
Don't want to work on the weekend? Fair enough. But if you do, media hits await. I do it at least three or four times per year, and it works every time.
A quick caveat: Your biggest, most critical announcements should be pitched more traditionally, on a weekday (Monday or Tuesday is best). But read on for ways you can get great exposure using “lightning rod issues.”
Why Reporters Will Respond on Weekends If you pitch to reporters on a Sunday morning and answer the phone when they call in response, you’ll do better than just get a story: you’ll be in their good books. I now have reporters calling me on weekends, because they know that I pick up and will go out of my way to help them.
Try this: look for a lightning rod issue (see tip number 2 in the white paper). Maybe you’re an inner-city soup kitchen, and your city is going through a heat wave. You can be sure that a local reporter – probably a young, inexperienced one – has been assigned a “heat wave” story.
On a weekday, she’d call up the government agency responsible for meteorology, the university health professor about staying safe in the sun, and maybe a sun tan lotion company. But on the weekend, none of those people will be available. So she’ll prepare to hit the beaches, looking for “streeters” from the public, which are usually less desirable than a real "story."
Imagine her relief when you email or call on Sunday morning and offer to talk about, for example, how the heat effects the homeless, who often get dehydrated and don’t necessarily have access to enough water or shelter?
Reports want to help not-for-profits; we just need to understand their needs. Most reporters got into the business to create positive social change. They want to help not-for-profits. But they are also under a time crunch and may reach for the usual story angles unless those aren’t available.
As an added bonus, most print and television media actually have higher readership/viewership on the weekends.
Reporters will jump at the chance to add another dimension to the story, and you will gain their goodwill and trust, which may translate into more weekday hits in the future.
If this article has been useful, or if you want to learn more about pitching stories to not-for-profits, download Frontier’s White Paper, Media Relations for Not-for-Profits: 7 Simple Steps to More Media Hits by Frontier Senior Consultant Derek Weiss.