Sometimes you just never know…
By Danny Sullivan
As a PR practitioner, once in a while something happens to make you scratch your head and revisit the question we all wonder from time to time: what qualifies as newsworthy on any given day?
Of course, there are certain things we know about this question (known knowns, if you will). For example, that size matters – the big news always gets covered first, and that it’s a known fact that survey results invariably make for good content on a slow news day.
But sometimes the rulebook goes out the window. A recent announcement by a client was deemed by all to be a fairly routine affair – certainly a story that was worth distributing, but not one that would generate significant media attention. Or so we thought.
Cue two days of frantic media activity, spawning all kinds of broadcast and print media coverage. No complaints here – delighted to get the response, but did we miss something on this one? Clearly we did, although, looking back, I stand firmly by our original conviction that the story was a relatively minor one!
In retrospect, the response was unexpected, but primarily driven by the media’s willingness to revisit a good story that, while already having played out in the press extensively, has the kind of enduring appeal that means it only takes a fairly minor event to push it back into the limelight.
It’s great when it happens, but confounding nonetheless.
