Reporters Roundtable: Understanding and Navigating Newsrooms to Break Through the Noise
Authored by Jesse Westbrook, Tory Newmyer, and Jack Turman
Over the last decade, a culmination of shrinking newsrooms, a never-ending news cycle, and a growing consumer demand for “click-bait”-style features has made companies’ pursuit of earned media coverage more challenging than ever before. At the same time, successfully navigating this increasingly fragmented media landscape remains integral to organizations’ ability to tell their stories in local, national, and international markets.
Narrative sat down with its seasoned group of in-house former reporters to gain a journalist’s perspective on how organizations of all sizes can break through this noise to craft as well as secure placement of compelling storylines:
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Jesse Westbrook, Managing Director, spent 18 years at Bloomberg News, serving as Managing Editor of U.S. Financial News. Jesse was also a co-founder of Capitol Account, a daily financial policy newsletter.
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Tory Newmyer, Senior Director, spent seven years as a National Business Reporter at The Washington Post, focusing on economic policy, Wall Street, and its regulators, as well as leading coverage of the Sam Bankman-Fried crypto fraud trial.
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Jack Turman, Strategic Communications Manager, was previously a Digital Reporter and Producer for CBS News, covering the U.S. Senate and the 2020 Democratic presidential primary race.
The former reporters shared their insights into how newsrooms operate and how understanding these different factors can help communicators more effectively share their narratives.
Public relations professionals now outnumber reporters six to one. How is this affecting organizations looking for media attention, and how can media relations professionals respond to this challenging dynamic?
Westbrook: The biggest challenge is that reporters’ beats keep getting more expansive because media companies can’t afford to replace most reporters who leave or get laid off. The upshot is that a reporter on the technology beat, for example, often is responsible for more companies than they can handle. As a result, they end up ignoring vast swaths of their beat and focusing on the handful of topics that they know will get clicks. Here’s how companies and their PR teams should respond:
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Offer more stories as exclusives.
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Frame stories as broader trend pieces about an entire industry, as opposed to narrow pitches about obscure individual companies that aren’t likely to generate coverage.
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Focus on niche and trade publications.
What is a significant shift currently going on or a significant shift that is coming that is mainly going unreported and unnoticed in the world of media and journalism?
Newmyer: Newsrooms are increasingly gearing coverage to maximize traffic and attention. Newspapers of record are abandoning entire lines of coverage and picking up others either in response to or anticipating where their audience is headed. The tension between the information and entertainment dimensions of the news business has existed since the 19th century. But the digital age — bringing with it falling revenue for traditional news operations, the proliferation of countless online outlets vying for attention, the collapse of the conventional 24-hour news cycle into an endless ongoing stream, and new tools to measure and tweak coverage in real-time to boost engagement — has kicked into overdrive a scramble to grab audience attention. For many stories, it is no longer sufficient that they are consequential. In the editors’ view, they must also be irresistible to news consumers.
What is the single most crucial element when building a story?
Turman: Timeliness is paramount, and PR professionals should consider how their story fits into the day’s events. If the pitch does not pertain to current events, newsrooms will unlikely be interested in covering the story. It is essential to consider why readers or viewers should care about the story. If it is clear why the pitch would matter to a broad audience, generating news coverage will be more straightforward.
What role do you believe journalism plays in shaping public discourse? Do you think various news mediums, like television or print, play different roles?
Newmyer: Journalism has lost some audience share to social media in shaping the public discourse. At the same time, it’s still the most potent force for discovering, framing, and magnifying stories that drive the national conversation. On this point, public confidence in the trustworthiness of the media tanking is oversold. The proliferation of outlets serving all points on the ideological spectrum has made it easier for news consumers to find a voice that will present the world to them the way they are most comfortable receiving it, even on the fringes.
Broadcast news remains more potent than print and digital journalism in determining real-world outcomes, in policy and beyond — though print journalism frequently breaks ground that broadcast will then amplify with follow-on reporting.
How do newsrooms balance the priorities of breaking news first versus the story’s craftsmanship?
Westbrook: Nothing is more valuable to a media outlet than a scoop because they can sell it as information you can’t get anywhere else. This is true now more than ever because competition among news organizations has gotten more intense, the media market is arguably oversaturated, and the pace at which information moves has gotten much faster. As a result, if you aren’t offering readers a steady cadence of scoops, you aren’t differentiating yourself. The upshot is that being able to break news is prioritized over story craftmanship.
What should we know about the relationship between reporters and their editors?
Turman: Editors and senior-level producers often decide which stories will be published. PR professionals should be aware that a meeting with a reporter does not necessarily ensure news coverage. Editors and senior-level producers can challenge the reporter to pursue different story angles to make a story more appealing to a broader audience. Ultimately, successful reporters learn how to package a story idea to capture the enthusiasm of their editor, who can then serve as a champion for the piece internally.
PR professionals are often taught how to develop relationships with reporters. How are you trained to develop relationships with sources?
Newmyer: The methods for cultivating these relationships are similar to traditional networking across industries:
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Try to make a human connection with someone.
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Be a good listener and have a sympathetic ear, as sources frequently talk because they want to be heard.
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Demonstrate early that you are honorable and will keep confidence.
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Check-in regularly to ensure you remain top of mind for any helpful information or perspective.
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Share information that may be helpful to your source.
Turman: A foundational component of developing relationships with sources is establishing trust. Sources must be assured that reporters will not betray them when sharing information. Reporters and sources also need to be responsive. If the sources are unresponsive to media inquiries, their perspective may be excluded from the story or be framed negatively. An additional core component is the mutual exchange of information. Sources and reporters can be a sounding board for new ideas and story angles to pursue. If the conversation is one-sided, it is unlikely that sources will go to that reporter first with new information.
