“Dealing with the media” has a negative connotation, but not all coverage is bad. Positive coverage can be a boon to any business. Oftentimes, it seems to be the same companies you are reading about. Those companies may not be doing their job any better than yours or the next; they may simply have a thorough press specialist in the midst.

What better way to get your message to riders and potential riders than in the paper or on the local news. Media get information from a multitude of sources and can only fit a small amount into their newspaper, magazine or news broadcast. What do you do to stand out?

Provided here are the basics for the small agencies where staff has to wear multiple hats and, for the large agencies with their own PR departments, keys to dealing with a crisis situation from Stuart Ross, deputy director of news at Transport for London.

Working on Deadline
One of the first things to keep in mind when dealing with the media is their continual deadline. Lee Colony, news editor at The Waukesha Freeman, says, “If you call somebody, ask them if they are on deadline.” He explains, “If somebody is on deadline, they probably can’t talk and whatever you might have to say to them, they might not remember just because they have to get the paper out.” He adds, “It doesn’t mean that they don’t want to talk to you, doesn’t mean that whatever you’re going to tell them is not important, it just means at that point, they have to put the paper out, they have a deadline to meet. Find out when the best time is to talk to them.”

Being responsive to them when they call helps them to meet their deadline. “When I call I’m usually working on a deadline,” says Marice Richter, reporter for the Dallas Morning News. “It may not be for that day, sometimes it is. We’re calling for a reason.” Both emphasize the importance of returning calls promptly, even if it is just to say you are too busy to talk and to suggest a time that would be good.

In this electronic age, there is an abundance of information available on the Web. Richter mentions, “So much information is available online that we don’t have to waste our sources’ time anymore on checking facts that we can look up.” She adds, “But for quotes we still rely on people and we need to be able to get to the people we want to speak to.”

She mentions how convenient it is that she has the cell phone numbers of all of the transit people in Dallas that she typically needs to talk to. “I think most reporters would agree they wish they had all their sources’ cell phone numbers.”