Feeding a news story to a journalist is an effective way of getting publicity. But you need to be careful.

Journalists have an ethical code. They are not for sale.

Many people mistakenly think applying commercial pressure influences the way journalists approach stories. For example, by saying you'll advertise in their title.

This can work with some journalists in certain circumstances. Most of the time threats or promises do more harm than good.

At best you will insult them or offend their professional pride.

At worst they'll decide not to risk touching your story in case they are tainted. Or they may underline their independence and cover your story with a more hostile approach.

Even if they bite, they may not see the story the same way as you.

Remember, their loyalty is to their readers. Journalists don't see helping your sales as part of their job.

This sounds confusing – media companies sell advertising so you might think journalists would jump at the chance of boosting sales. They like advertising, but they won't trade their integrity.

Journalists have a long term view. They know readers have more respect for titles with a strong ethical code. This translates to commercial success.

Respected titles have more readers, so they sell more advertising. They also get a better class of reader, which means a better class of customer for advertisers. Research shows advertising is more effective in credible titles.

Businesses wanting to grab people's attention have two options: advertising and publicity. They are not the same.

Advertising is a commercial deal between your business and the media.

You buy a fixed amount of print space, billboards, radio or TV airtime, or web traffic. You take responsibility for providing the advertising material – called copy in the industry – at your cost.

If you've got the budget, you can hire creative specialists to prepare the copy for you. It's usually worth the cost. Advertising professionals know how to get results.

As an advertiser you are in control. You decide when and where your adverts run. You have the last say over the message.

Advertising is expensive. Publicity is often cheaper. It is also riskier.

Publicity is when you grab people's attention in other ways. If you hire a publicist, a public relations expert or a press officer, those people will attempt to place stories in the media on your behalf. They can't usually guarantee anyone will sit up and take notice.

You have far less control with publicity. It works best when you have something newsworthy or interesting to say. If it isn't interesting then the media will ignore it. And your story can be crowded out on days when there are other more interesting stories.

Editors and journalists' first responsibility is to their readers. It's not their job to sell your business. It is their job to keep readers informed and interested.

Publicity is a scattergun. It can work. It might not. Use advertising to make certain your message reaches your target audience. It acts like a guided missile and costs about as much.

For an old school journalist like me, reading Trevor Young's  8 Things I'd Do If I Was a Starting Out in PR Today¹ is like the Poms getting hold of the German's Enigma machine at the start of World War 2.

It means I know what the enemy² is thinking and can stay one step ahead – at least some of the time.

Young has written a road-map for junior public relations professionals. It should be cut out and pinned beside every agency or in-house desk. It shouldn't. That's old school thinking. It should be downloaded and stored on every PR person's iPad or smartphone.

Along the way he writes:

SIX – I would read every newspaper I could get my hands on, hang out at the newsagent and flick through as many magazines as humanly possible (without getting sprung!); read newsletters, swap radio stations, check out the array of cable TV channels on offer.

Traditional media is not going away any time soon; if you can 'join the dots' between traditional and social media, you will become a lot more valuable to your employer!

The advice applies to everyone, but journalists and PR people not reading everything in this way are in the wrong job.

¹. Trevor, the ninth thing I'd do is learn how to write headlines in Australian newspaper style, grammatically correct and without sticking capital letters on everything. Or am I out of touch and this is just old school journo thinking?

². If all PR people were as smart as Young, who cleverly brands himself online as the PR Warrior, we could drop the idea of journalists and PR people being at each others' throats all the time.

In 1997 I spent six months on a contract editing the Australian Net Guide. At the time it was owned by Ozemail.

The job was great fun and I worked with some terrific people. This story appeared in The Australian as we went to press with an issue looking at online sex. The content was far more innocent than you might imagine, but we still sealed the section – ANG was, after all, a family magazine.

Companies need to keep communication channels open so:

• investors,
• business partners,
• employees and
• customers

stay informed.

You might think  because you are a knowledge worker, your job puts you in a back room role where you don’t need to worry about communications. You may work for a company that thinks it has watertight external communications strategies.

Spokesperson

Even if your employer has access to the brightest and best communications experts, you may still find yourself acting as spokesperson.

In fact, if your employer uses the best communications experts, you are more likely to find yourself in the media front line.

That’s because experienced journalists see through the platitudes and feel-good nonsense spouted by corporate spin-doctors. Although they may not immediately be able to dig deep enough to find the real story behind a smokescreen, they know what a smokescreen smells like.

Putting genuine, but trained and fully briefed, voices in front of the media works to a company's advantage.

You might  be forced to speak to the media even if your employer prefers you to stay in the background. This means that being able to articulate a company's position is a key skill.

Crisis management

Dealing with communications when things go wrong is crisis management. Smart firms put crisis management plans in place long before any anticipated problems, this saves valuable time when troubles appear.

Developing a crisis management plan is best left for another time. The key elements are establishing lines of communications and putting people in place who can articulate a company’s point of view to the media.

Of course, it's a good idea to give all senior managers media training.

Let's assume you don’t have media training, there are no well-developed lines of communications and you know nothing of any crisis management plans. Things have gone badly wrong and you are in the thick of it.

What should you do if a journalist quizzes you about a potentially damaging news story?

Good stories, not good news

Before we go any further, I must declare a personal interest. I am a journalist, I cover technology companies, I write news. I like to write good stories.

Good doesn't necessarily mean positive. The news media likes stories with reader interest – from your point of view that might be anything but good.

I prefer to go straight to the most obvious news source – the man or woman in the department dealing with the matter – and ask direct questions. The idea isn’t to catch someone out or make someone look stupid – my goal is to get to the bottom of the story and find facts.

Most employers expect employees to take one of two courses of action at this point. They might prefer it if the employee said nothing, refusing to speak and blocking all questions. Or they might expect an employee to tell outright lies.

Both courses of action are equally damaging, both to the company and to the employee.

Telling lies is dumb

Aside from any ethical considerations, telling lies is just plain stupid.

Sooner or later the truth will emerge and you will be on the record as a liar. Your employer won't look any better.

You may get away with this. A future employer will not know, not care or even be impressed you lied to cover your previous employer’s backside. Maybe.

Other people will remember your lies. And that will harm your reputation over the long-term, maybe even your business.

At any point a rival might remember those lies and make them public. Your lie might be legally actionable.

On the other hand, if you block a question, it can make things sound worse than they are.

It might  mean you or your employer don’t get an opportunity to put the record straight.

There are worse possibilities.

Suppose you were to read in a newspaper, 'company X refused to comment on claims that it was trading while bankrupt'? What does this make you think about the company?

In my experience I’ve come up against more advanced forms of blocking, but they all amount to the same thing.  'The executive responsible for the exploding television monitors could not be contacted yesterday' doesn’t sound innocent.

So what should you do when the media calls?

Rules number one, two and three are do not tell lies.

Don't even consider it. It is better to say nothing.

If you don't want to answer questions or are not authorised to speak, find someone else who can.

There's nothing wrong with telling a journalist that you aren’t able to help with enquiries but your immediate boss can.

There's also nothing wrong with telling a journalist that you, or whoever can speak, is busy but will call back shortly – when you do this, calling back quickly is important. This approach can buy you time to think about exactly what to say, take a deep breath and calm those nerves.

You might even want to take advice from a communications professional.

Being good at your job helps. But to get the best jobs you also need to work on your profile.

When top-flight companies hire executives, the first question they ask is ‘who is the ideal person for the role?’

The first name that comes to mind is usually someone with the right skills set and a high-profile. One sure-fire way to build a higher profile is to become a media star.

Reporters and editors are only as good as their contacts. Although stories appearing in newspapers, magazines and online or broadcast via radio and television are increasingly manufactured – many are not.

Journalists need expert sources to explain things or to put them in context.

Because journalists need source fast, they turn to the people they know first. For example, if a military coup erupts in a third-world country, reporters will hunt for citizens of that country or at least someone who has more than a passing knowledge of the country.

This process gets granular – particularly with the trade and specialist press. If a computer virus infects government computers, reporters look for online security experts. Computerworld reporters will determine the operating system and hardware concerned and look for, say, Windows Server 2008 security experts.

And that is the opportunity.

No matter how obscure your area of expertise, if you are a knowledge worker you are an expert on something and a valuable resource to journalists and editors. In fact, the more obscure your expertise the more valuable you are as a contact.

Be ready to comment

It's no good just being an expert. You have to let journalists and editors know you are there and available for comment. They are not going to find out about you through psychic power. This is the hardest part of building your profile.

If you work for a big outfit, use your company’s public relations agency or marketing communications person. Make sure that they circulate your name to editors and key journalists as a possible expert contact.

Don’t forget to include online news sites, TV and radio stations on your list.

Running a blog centred on your expertise will also help you develop a higher profile.

Another approach is to wait until something happens and issue a statement. For this to work properly you need to anticipate the news and prepare your statement in advance. If you really are a subject expert this won’t be that difficult. But you’ll have to move fast. Journalists tend to work around the clock and time waits for no-one.

Marketing communications, the business of letting people know about your products and services, has two distinct parts: advertising and publicity. For more about the differences between the two, see Use publicity to get noticed.

Advertising is straightforward. You pay money directly to a media company. In return, you control your message and its presentation. Advertising is a commercial transaction.

Publicity is different. It can still cost you money – there are plenty of businesses who will willingly accept payment for their promotional services – but in general you don’t pay the media to promote your message and you have no say over timing, placement or presentation.

You can’t even be sure it will run.

In theory, you'll get publicity when the story you want to tell is so compelling that journalists and editors will fall over themselves to make sure it appears. Remember their idea of compelling is unlikely to coincide with your opinion.

Editors need to give readers, viewers or listeners the hottest news, up-to-date information, the most relevant background features and the best stories. They may also look for something entertaining to brighten up their pages.

Contrary to what you may think, they generally don’t care at all about whether their stories help you or your business. Or at least they shouldn’t if they are doing their job properly.

However, there are some, less than totally independent publications where this doesn’t apply.

Another common misunderstanding about publicity is that the best way to get it is the press release. This is a pre-written version of the story you’d like to see in print. Press releases are usually written in a highly stylised format, containing the basic facts together with background.

Press releases can work, but in general they don’t.

Many go straight into the bin. And rightly so. That’s the usual place for rubbish. They mainly exist because clients like them – they create an aura of useful media activity.

In fact, there are publicity experts who believe the overwhelming majority of press releases are never read by journalists, let alone used as the basis for an editorial item.

Some of the best communications professionals – they may call themselves public relations consultants, press agents or even something bombastic like media consul – will tell you press releases are only one, not particularly useful strategy and account for a tiny fraction of their work.

We’ll look at the mechanics of press releases another time.

Remember, publicity involves enticing the media to write or broadcast information about your company, product or services because you have something new, important, exciting or otherwise interesting to say.

The best way to do this is to call a journalist and tell them, quickly and concisely, just what your story is and why it may interest their readers. Like everything else in business, this is largely a matter of forming the right relationships.

If you don’t feel comfortable doing this, get some media training or hire a press agent to call on your behalf. Good public relations professionals know precisely who to call and how to pitch stories in a way that makes them more interesting to journalists or editors. They can introduce you to the right people, set up face-to-face meetings or organise phone interviews and help you prepare for these.

Occasionally when you have something particularly important to announce, you may want to hold a formal press conference or maybe host a less formal gathering of journalists for morning tea, lunch or afternoon cocktails. This kind of event works best when used sparingly, it’s not always the best way of telling a story, but it’s a great way to make or maintain contact.