Perspective
News value beats reach.
Reach numbers look impressive on pitch decks – and disappear in the newsroom. What journalists really care about is the news value of a story. Understand it, and you get into the outlets that matter.
2 min read · Philipp von Roeder
In kick-off meetings I keep hearing the same goal: „We want to be in the big outlets.“ Almost never do I hear: „We have a story that is genuinely new.“ Yet that is the difference between PR that gets covered and PR that gets lost in a journalist's inbox.
News value exists where something is relevant, new and contextualisable. A new funding round is rarely a story on its own. A new product only becomes one when it solves a problem many people share. And a new market becomes interesting when it challenges an existing understanding.
My job as a PR consultant is to find the news value in a story – often where companies can no longer see it themselves, because they are too deep in their own technology. That includes the uncomfortable question: why should anyone outside your company want to read about this?
Clarify news value first, and you save yourself scattered effort in media relations. And in the end you reach exactly the audience you set out to reach – but on a foundation that holds.