(In the off-season year of 1995, the editor of Campaigns & Elections Magazine asked me to write a brief story about the use of press releases by campaigns. Both as a media consultant and earlier as a congressional staffer, I had used my experience as a reporter to guide clients and organizations into helping themselves by helping reporters and editors do their jobs and sometimes doing the job for them. It wasn’t a new tactic: providing free branded materials to newspapers was common from recipes to right-wing advocacy. It wasn’t brand journalism, it was pure selling; an unabashed effort by organizations on either side of The Wall to have their needs met without openly compromising their roles. In bold below is one of the ways the arrangement worked in the business of campaigns.)

Most reporters say the value of a press release has gone up in recent times thanks to the advent of newsroom recycling. But your release can get to the box marked “in” before it goes to the one marked “bin” if it shows that you know your message and your media.

Trashing an ambitious politician is a cherished rite in the news business and showering reporters with too much paper is a surefire way to be called before the bar and grill after hours.One of the most satisfying columns I ever read was a piece about our opponent’s releases being used as scratch paper by the columnist’s toddler. A lot of the complaining may be due to the curly nature of fax paper, but in an age when satellite coverage and online services reach further and further down the journalistic food chain, the press release can seem less relevant all the time.

But like it or not, reporters and the people who assign them rely on releases and quickly grade campaigns by the quality of the information the campaign puts out.

Good reporters will never follow your roadmap all the way, but establish your credibility early and the press will work with you, not around you, up to the end. To keep your campaign’s releases in play, make them essential to the story you want to see. Start by making sure the press people are an essential part of the campaign team, with access to the candidate and the other senior staffers at all times and knowledge of the polling, paid media and mail strategies. Continue reading →