Much work for the bucket

Most PR texts end up in the wastepaper basket.FROM NORBERT WINISTÖRFER*They annoy media professionals every day with unusable content: the communications departments in companies, organizations and administrations. They produce vast quantities of texts, up to 75 percent of which are deleted at the click of a mouse or end up in an unopened envelope in the wastepaper basket. In this way, companies waste scarce work resources and become a nuisance to stressed media professionals. What's wrong? The realization that the PR and media systems are interdependent and mutually beneficial is obviously misinterpreted in marketing and corporate communications. An offer can only be fruitful in this already conflict-prone relationship if the recipient is interested in it. Attracting the attention of journalists is therefore the first major hurdle for providers of corporate information. Taking 20Minuten as an example, this means standing out from the 1500 to 2000 e-mails received daily in the editorial folder with your topic input and triggering a publication.most media outlets still see themselves as guardians of topics and not as sellers of exciting stories. This is the only explanation for the fact that the majority of information fed into the media system has hardly any news value. That titles and statements in front of TV cameras do not appeal to media consumers because they are too abstract, too factual and too complicated. That companies in the age of short-form journalism do not offer their information to the media in a modularized way: supplementing a main text with attractive info boxes containing secondary aspects, short portraits and interviews or useful reader services. Such an opulent menu can seduce journalists, and the content provided to the media becomes even more seductive when it is visualized. For example, with unique images without an advertising character, with meaningful infographics, tables, video clips, podcasts. All in publishable quality and freely accessible on the homepage. Much of this is missing from the news offered by companies to editorial offices. As a result, they miss out on the opportunity to outdo the competition in the battle for limited editorial space - who at the same time are also striving for mass media publicity with their topics. This also includes the standard-compliant formal preparation of media texts. SMEs and non-profit organizations in particular often come out as amateurs here. Media releases are often missing the bindings (short info text about the sender), contact details and further links. In addition, the basic rules of journalistic language are disregarded, advertising language is confused with news language, specialist knowledge and vocabulary are assumed and media-specific text lengths are ignored. For example, the text mask of an SDA report can only contain a maximum of 67 characters in the title and 267 characters in the lead. A standard SDA bulletin is also only 3400 characters long. Those who ignore such things force journalists to rewrite the original report. They carelessly produce a single media release and simply send it to all the editorial offices on their media distribution list. In most cases, this is pure spam, because print, online, radio and TV editors have different needs.The professional in media relations prepares his newsworthy information in a way that is appropriate for the target media and uses various publication platforms. The free gazette then receives a longer article with a picture and info box, the text for the regional newspaper emphasizes the local reference, the online editorial office receives a short online text with links, picture gallery and video. The regional journal is offered the sonorous voice of the CEO, regional TV is given permission to film in production and a crisp statement from the head of marketing. A background report for the industry magazine and a short report for a community portal are also produced. As a result, the same topic is viewed from different perspectives, with different focal points and dramaturgical structures. Of course, this kind of custom work is time-consuming, but it increases the chances of publication, although the decisive factor for a publication is and always will be the media potential of the topic. Is it of interest to the target group? If you also know how to make your media content more tabloid, your chances of publication are even higher. In concrete terms, this means emotionalizing, personalizing, compressing, visualizing and staging information. In other words, deliver less dry hard facts and more soft news. In this case, the title of a media release is no longer a bare profit figure, but a quote from a proud CEO that he can say to the camera without stuttering. And he provides the details of how it is possible to be successful in a crisis-ridden industry. In this story, visible people talk about feelings, there are heroes - and the competition as losers. It is the age-old journalistic pattern of conveying content in an exciting way. This journalistic way of thinking and acting is still not sufficiently present in many communications departments - or is prevented by internal processes and directives from non-communications experts higher up in the hierarchy. There is a need for more internal education on how effective and reputation-enhancing media work can be. However, this must be geared towards the overarching communication goals of the organization. Targeted media work requires strategic thinking, systematic planning, in-depth knowledge of the fragmented media system and consumption as well as constant topic monitoring. What topics are in the media? Does the company have anything to say about them? Which medium is best for reaching target groups with multimedia storytelling? In today's media work, the main focus is on fast electronic media, the changed work processes in newsrooms and the inclusion of social media. Targeted feeding of company information via blogs, Twitter and Facebook allows subtle agenda-setting with journalists, and in many companies media work is still too strongly focused on the sluggish print media. People are surprised when a newsroom journalist takes a video and photos with their smartphone during a newspaper interview. It is ignored that the article in the newspaper does not trigger a response because the target group addressed no longer reads newspapers. Instead, they skim the statements in words, images and sound in the online news just a few minutes after the interview. In a positive case, this leads to likes and shares. Or reputation-damaging comments. Not all companies have yet arrived in this new world of media relations.