Know your newsroom – not just your education reporter – when pitching a story about your school

“Education reporters” aren’t the only journalists interested in covering your school. Here’s who else to reach out to in the newsroom.

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Perhaps, too often when pitching to an outlet, we tend to think “who is the Education Reporter over there?” But if you’re relying just on “education reporters” to report on your schools, you may have a hard time getting their attention.

Here are a few reasons why:

• Education Reporters tend to be focused on the biggest (not necessarily best) districts in their communities, because their job is to provide education stories with the widest reach/impact. In Houston, for example, there are 20 traditional ISDs. The number of students attending the five largest ISDs in the area is equal to about 1/10th of the overall population. Add to that all the staff working at those schools, the parents sending kids to those schools and alumni, and suddenly you have a pretty big chunk of the city interested in what happens in those five ISDs. Unfortunately, the other 15 ISDs – as well as charters and private schools – can get lost in the shuffle. 
• With so much to cover,education reporters tend to focus on the “big picture” items like administrative changes, construction and budgetary items. The day-to-day good stories in schools tend to get missed.
• Conversely, when education reporters do have opportunity to write features and “good school stories,” there is a pressure from both editors and readers to vary the schools and districts they write about. So if a reporter wrote a nice story about your science fair last year, it’s a good idea to reach out again this year, but don’t be surprised if they cover the one across town instead to mix things up. There’s also sometimes a tendency NOT to report a “one-off” story about one school, because it creates an inherent obligation to do it for others. (One of the most common gripes in newsrooms is “if I cover this thing, everyone else is going to want me to cover THEIR thing”). This is not unique to education reporters; all reporters with an assigned beat feel this pressure. 

Fortunately, there are a ton of other people in newsrooms who cover education besides education reporters who are always looking for a good story. So this week’s Media Monday is about learning some of the newsroom roles you might not already be thinking of when pitching.

Here are a few:

TV Producer: When you think of a TV news story, you often think of the anchor reading it on-air. But the person behind the scenes who found the story, conducted interviews and pieced together the story for that anchor is often a producer who is never seen on screen. They are the secret force that make local TV news work.

Web Producer: Besides adding headlines, photos and videos to stories that appear online, these journalists are often responsible for writing 5-10 stories per day EVERY day for their outlet. Usually, they are rewrites of press releases, quick crime briefs, aggregations, listicles (i.e. Niche rankings of schools) or anything else that can be turned around quickly to draw traffic on the website. Sometimes these stories are picked up for broadcast or print publication, and sometimes not. Usually someone on these teams is also responsible for sharing stories to social media, so a story produced at this level often gets the best social media push.

Videographer: At some TV stations, a videographer plays the roles of assignment editor, researcher, interviewer and editor. Because they are the person whose boots ALWAYS have to be on the ground (you can’t get good video if you don’t leave the newsroom), they are the TV journalist you are most likely to meet on an assignment. In my personal experience, an experienced TV videographer is often the friendliest journalist you’ll ever meet regardless of outlet (TV, newspaper, radio, etc.)  and often the most knowledgeable about a variety of subjects, so they’re good folks to know, in general.

Community/Neighborhood/Suburb/Bureau Reporter: In many of our bigger cities, you’re possibly more likely to get coverage for your schools and districts by working with a reporter who covers a specific neighborhood than someone who covers “education.”  As stated earlier, an education reporter has to cover ALL schools. But a neighborhood reporter is just looking for good stories in their part of town, so they have a little more leeway to cover the same institution multiple times. They’re also more likely to feature a positive accomplishment of one of your students outside of school, which is another good way to get your school’s name out.

Assignment Producer/Assignment Editor/News Director/City Editor/Assistant City Editor/Program Director: These journalists have a lot of names, but essentially what they are is the gatekeepers for good stories.  In most cases, either they are the ones finding stories and assigning them to reporters, or reporters go to them for approval on the stories they are looking to pursue. Very little gets worked on without the OK of this group.

Social Media Manager/Producer/Specialist – Occasionally these staff members create stories, but they are more valuable for sharing the good stories that are already out there. A friendly relationship here can help our stories reach more people than they might have otherwise. They’re also good people to reach out to when you have a great photo or video, but not necessarily a story to go with it, because they’re always looking for shareable social content.

What tips do you have for making positive connections with the reporters who cover your schools? Share them in the comments below!