Writing headlines is a lot easier said than done. It requires creativity, as long as you don’t get “too creative” and veer into distasteful or otherwise dubious terrain. It demands brevity, but not so succinct that you fail to communicate some gist of the story that follows. And, of course, it ought to be brimming […]
Category Archives: News Industry
Mickey Straub and the Lincoln Town Car that he’ll use to criss-cross America over a 50-day span starting on Sept. 4th. Pitching a story can be much like selling a product–if you can command attention and capture imagination from the get-go, then you’ve got a clear advantage over your competition. Such is the case […]
Four years ago, I predicted in this blog that as long as Joe the Plumber was around, he’d have a voice during each Presidential campaign cycle. My post was headlined, “Hey Joe the Plumber, it’s Just the Start!” Turns out my prediction was too timid in its vision—in case you missed it, Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher is […]
Last week, PR Secrets From a Media Insider returned with a typically eclectic assortment of attendees: two citizen activists, a healthcare practitioner, a communications specialist, a furniture store owner and a representative of a stained glass studio. Among other points that I emphasized: For many publicists, sending an e-mail often marks the extent of their […]
Highly recommended reading: “Penn State, My Final Loss of Faith,” by Thomas L. Day, which appeared last month in the Washington Post. It’s an excellent commentary by someone with extensive experience connected to the now-controversial Second Mile charity founded by alleged pedophile Jerry Sandusky. The piece came to my attention today after Day, a fellow Medill alum, […]
What’s next, URLs by the block? Sure, “hyper-local,” as a way of describing the trend in journalism toward coverage centered on ever-smaller geographic areas, has been overused in recent years. But I can’t help but think that the Chicago Tribune, some four years after launching TribLocal to up the media market’s ante in the suburbs, has […]
747, the digital clock declared. When I first opened my eyes on Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, that was the time in Oak Park, Illinois. I thought of 747 model airplanes, then briefly drifted back to sleep. As I later discovered, only a few minutes earlier a group of terrorists had crashed into a tower of the […]
If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then two remarkably reminiscent photos ought to be worth at least a 250-word blog post. Two weeks ago, as I loaded my kids into the family van outside my office near downtown Oak Park, I noticed two men playing chess on the trunk of a taxi. It was too cool […]
The headline today in Ragan’s PR Daily reads, “Study: LinkedIn top social media site for journalists.” So, at first blush, it might be tempting to fire off that next news release straight through LinkedIn to your target list of media members. And while that may well be the eventual path you take, it behooves you […]