Want to get on The Today Show? Get in the Wall St. Journal first

As I've noted before, "The Today Show" on NBC gets segment ideas from The Wall Street Journal, so if you want to be on the TV show, get into the newspaper.

Case in point: Yesterday's WSJ ran the article, "Kids Quit the Team for More Family Time," and the morning TV program piggybacked on it for this story today featuring the family in the WSJ. This happens regularly. Publicity begets publicity.

Are you sure you want to reject that interview opportunity?

I've been hearing from journalist friends lately about "the one that got away" -- more specifically, the article sources who passed on interview requests because the national publications involved were "too small."

Um, Mr. or Ms. Well-Known Enough to be Considered but Not Exactly Famous Either, are you sure you want to do that? Do you really want to communicate to journalists who write for multiple publications that you are, as my little nephew would say, "specialer" than those who agreed to do interviews? Perhaps you don't know that the journalist you rejected today with the "your publication isn't important enough to me" explanation could be someone in a position to interview you for your dream media outlet next week, next month, or next year. You've burned a few bridges . . . and what did your mother tell you about that?

We all need to be conscious of how we use our time so that we put our energy where it will have the greatest impact on our businesses and careers. But I'm not sure this applies to interview requests from the press. You can find your biggest client through exposure in a small-circulation magazine or newsletter. You can also be discovered by your dream media outlet through interviews in local, regional, or niche publications or outlets. Publicity does beget publicity while arrogance with the press can, quite honestly, keep you from reaching your goals.

Think twice before turning down that next unexpected, "you're not on my target media list" interview opportunity. You won't know what you'll miss out on when you say, "No thanks," but when you respond with, "I'd be happy to talk to you," you'll discover more possibilities than you might imagine.

Did something good happen to you after you did an interview with a media outlet that wasn't on your target list?

Want More Publicity? Get Starter Publicity

Publicity begets publicity. You've heard me say it before because I've seen it in action as a publicist and more recently, as a writer, but now there's harder evidence of this. "How News Happens," a new study from the Pew Research Center, reveals that "much of the 'news' people receive contains no original reporting. Fully eight out of ten stories studied simply repeated or repackaged previously published information."

The report went on to say that ". . . of the stories that did contain new information nearly all, 95%, came from traditional media—most of them newspapers. These stories then tended to set the narrative agenda for most other media outlets."

The Pew study of Baltimore media outlets is representative of the local media news-gathering and reporting process, but this plays out nationally, as well. Writers like me use our local newspapers to help generate article ideas that we sell to national publications; national business publication staffers monitor the trade press for news and trends article ideas; the network TV morning talk shows pick up interesting stories from their local affiliates. Whether your story appears in a local or national media outlet, online or offline, you still have a much better chance of getting your story into more than one outlet if you get that one hit first.

For most of us, the easiest way to do this is to start locally. As the Pew study has shown, you'll go the farthest fastest if you start with your daily newspaper.

Have you enjoyed larger media exposure after a local mention? What happened?

Editors Are Busy; That's Good News for You

Assigning editors are busy -- so busy, in fact, that they often get story or segment ideas from other media outlets because they don't have time to uncover something "new," "fresh," or "novel."

Local TV stations, for example, rely heavily on the local daily newspaper for stories to air. But it happens just as often on the national level, too. I received an e-mail today from the host of a Web TV program who was quoted in a national business magazine on the popularity of Web TV shows; he asked people on his mailing list to leave a comment about the story on the publication's Web site. Why? He tells us, "If there are enough comments, other news media will pick up on the article, and it's likely to appear in various well known print publications."

He's half right. Well-known print publications will not reprint an article that appeared in a major national business publication. But, comments or not, if an editor at one of those "well known print publications" (or at a not well-known print publication) sees the article and thinks the topic is a good fit for the outlet's target audience, he might assign his own article on the subject and interview some of the sources featured in the first article.

So, as I've mentioned here before, publicity begets publicity. Get that first mention without worrying about whether it's in just the right media outlet. Get out there and get known. You might be surprised at how a small amount of exposure leads to much more down the road.