The "Lead" Is More Important Than Ever

by Dick Jones
Dick Jones Communications

Greg Toppo, education writer for USA TODAY, advises us to imagine, before we make our pitches, that we are at one end of the parking lot and he is at the other. "If you can't yell the story to me across a parking lot," he says, "I'm probably not going to bite."

The lead is where you "yell the story across the parking lot."

With the cascade of email flooding the inboxes of media gatekeepers, the lead has never been more important than it is today.

Actually, we now need two leads. The first is the email subject line. The editor or news producer makes the first cut based on what is written there. And to complicate the process, spam blockers, sometimes using bewildering logic, are doing the same.

Once you vault that hurdle, you have several seconds to convince a media gatekeeper that your information is worth reading. You need a good lead. "You can't waste time clearing your throat," as Phil Joyce, former Op-Ed editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, used to say.

You can be funny; that sometimes works. Except that it's hard to be funny. Most people are not. Most attempts at humor flop.

Here are examples of leads that worked and the thought behind them:

The President was shot in a theater tonight and perhaps mortally wounded. This lead by Lawrence Gobright of the Associated Press was filed on April 14, 1865, and remains a model for the saying, "use a small lead for a big story." In other words, if your college's researchers have come up with a cure for the common cold, all you have to do is say so.

Pennsylvania's bees are feeling the sting of a hard winter. One function of a lead is to give a capsule summary of the story. Another is to move the reader to the second paragraph. What happened to these bees?

Administrators at Texas Christian University wanted to keep more juniors and seniors on campus. So they gave them what they were going off campus to find: affordable, apartment-style living. It's not flashy but this summary lead tells readers enough for them to make a decision about whether this is a story they want to read or not.

What organizers believe to be the largest maze in the world is being built in a cornfield adjacent to Lebanon Valley College in Annville, PA. When Tom Brokaw read this 1992 letter, he scribbled "Book This" right on it. The producer showed me the letter. If you have the largest, smallest, first, last, or only, let the gatekeeper know right up front. Caution: claiming that something is "unique" can be hazardous to your credibility unless you've really checked out that claim.

Baseball players at Mansfield University must do three things well: field, hit, and baby-sit. The idea here simply was to move the reader to the second sentence. We expect baseball players to field and hit, but why must they baby-sit?

I think there is often better lead-writing to be found in public relations today than in journalism. The Darwinian rules of our craft require that we must "yell the story across the parking lot" effectively or see our efforts unrewarded. At many newspapers and broadcast outlets, by contrast, there is less editing than there used to be, and the leads grow in length and decrease in clarity. As always, we welcome your thoughts on this topic.

We invite your discussion of this topic on PIOnet.

Book Review: Winning with the News Media: A Self-Defense Manual When You're the Story

by Annette Hannon Lee
North Georgia College & State University

The new, 2005 (8th) edition of Clarence Jones's Winning with the News Media: A Self-Defense Manual When You're the Story includes almost 400 pages and covers just about everything you'd ever need to know to deal with, cope with, defend yourself from, and understand newspapers, radio, and television. Jones takes you inside the minds of reporters and editors, giving experienced insight as to how they'll react when you, your CEO, or other official makes a mistake or does something heroic or brilliant or stupid.

Back in the 1980s, I recommended the early editions of this book, then known as How to Speak TV, when working with faculty members and administrators in media training sessions or speaking before groups of public information officers. At that time, the publication was only 196 pages long and focused primarily on personal skills for television interviews. It evolved in the early 1990s to How to Speak TV, Print and Radio, and the book continued to serve as a valuable, easy-to-read, handy reference for working with the news media. Jones's attention to changing times and media has added important details to each edition, and the latest version of the book provides an astounding array of topics of interest and importance to anyone working in public relations. I still recommend the book, more than ever before.

The author knows what he's writing about. Jones was a reporter for 30 years -- half that time in newspapers, half as one of America's most honored television journalists, the only reporter for a local TV station to ever win the duPont-Columbia award three times.

When he wrote the first version of this book, Jones left reporting to become a news media consultant and on-camera coach. I've watched him in action with regional and national higher-education-advancement audiences and once with a roomful of law enforcement officers. Ostensibly low key and laid back, he's actually a dynamic presenter. Jones speaks and writes like a reporter, specifically a broadcast-news reporter, with a hard-hitting and eye-opening style. He knows the news media from the inside as well as the outside, and what he's learned from 20 years of working with clients packs the pages of this book with exceptionally useful ideas and anecdotes for public information professionals, as well as for anyone wanting to know about the news media. Jones's writing style makes it seem simple and easy, but this very pithy book teaches old-timers like me a thing or three.

The book is organized in three sections -- Media Strategy, Personal Skills, and Inside the Media. The third section is an almanac that provides charts and data for newspaper circulation, television ratings, and how advertising dollars are spent. There's also an extensive list of media jargon with definitions. It's a great resource for public relations interns, student journalists, experienced media relations professionals, or anyone likely to face a news interview.

This edition has a new chapter -- News Media Trends -- that details the investments made by the corporations that own the four major TV networks. Jones is concerned about the cross-ownership that is damaging the credibility of the news media.

Other useful additions to the new edition include a lengthy listing to help you write your own media-crisis checklist and a recount of the major scandals that have infected the media in recent months and years.

Jones's chapter subheads would provide public information officers with meaty topics for lively conference discussions or barstool conversations. Among my favorites: "If That's the Story, I Must Have Been Somewhere Else," "Do the Media Make Up The Rules as They Go Along?" "In a Media Crisis, Your Lawyer Will Be Wrong," "Quotable Quotes That Won't Be Misquoted," "Did I Really Say That?" "Can They Do That And Get Away With It?" and "For the End of the World, You Get Two Minutes."

The book is available from bookstores and amazon.com, but you might save postage by going to the publication's website, http://www.winning-newsmedia.com, where you'll also learn more about the content and see several reviews.

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	Best Practices: Embargoed News by Roger Johnson Newswise We have been dealing with news releases from hundreds of institutions for more than 12 years. Our method of delivery, archival, and unique relationship with journalists facilitates the gathering of data. Consequently, weÕve been able to add to the science part of this art and science. This report will review practices we have observed over the past 12 years that should help ensure your news reaches its intended audience and is effective. Content The first principle is that news based on research results is most effective. We have demonstrated via a study that these items generate greater news media activity and results. (For a thorough description of this study, see one of our monthly reports here.) This report tracked news clips resulting from Newswise research news releases found on Google News during a one-month period. While Google News is not a comprehensive clipping service, it is an excellent source from which to gauge the broad range of results. Via this mechanism we found clips for 83% (158 of 191) of all research stories contributed to Newswise during the month. Timing The second major issue that determines effectiveness is timing. Providing research news to journalists before an embargo date that has been determined by a publication or scientific conference almost guarantees effectiveness with the news media. In our study, when institutions provided research releases to the media via Newswise before the embargo date, we found clips for 97% of those releases. We encourage as much lead time as possible with embargoed news. At a minimum, three days is best, and ten days is more than sufficient. This will give the journalists enough time to contact you, conduct research, and prepare their story prior to the lifting of the embargo. We realize that embargoes are a sensitive issue and can stimulate much angst and anxiety, but reporters have a long tradition of honoring them. However, embargoed news should be distributed only to journalists who have explicitly agreed to honor the embargo, otherwise you will be violating your own embargo. Consequently, it is important to have a thorough embargo control mechanism built into a distribution system. The major scientific and medical journals, such as JAMA, British Medical Journal, Lancet, and Neurology are the most concerned about embargoes, and they distribute their embargoed news directly through Newswise. Others, such as Science Magazine, have specifically approved Newswise to receive embargoed news from our participating institutions prior to the journal publication date. For example, at Newswise we rigorously review reporters' credentials, and ensure that only credentialed journalists have access to embargoed news. Journalists must have a password to access embargoed news, and to receive a password, they must first promise to honor embargoes. With the new Newswise site, we have enhanced protection of your embargoed material. Our new full-text and "printer friendly" versions of news releases carry the embargo date, so that any releases printed from Newswise will automatically have the embargo information printed at the top. In our browse menus, the embargo appears in bright red to help ensure that it is seen. Embargoes are occasionally broken, and mostly these incidents are accidents that are handled with little or no damage. Considering the volume of embargoed news (e.g. 30% percent [1854 of 6116] of stories contributed to Newswise in 2004 were embargoed), there are few problems. Balancing the potential anxiety associated with embargoed stories, however, is the positive impact they have with reporters. Embargoed stories tend to give the most effective results. The embargo is perceived as a flag for hard news. However, the embargo strategy should be used only for research results published in an academic, peer-reviewed journal or presented at a national meeting. For example, at Newswise, feature stories and announcements may be listed as embargoed but they are not password protected. We invite your discussion of this topic on PIOnet.