I recently attended a media briefing with the business editors of the Sunday Telegraph – Business Editor, Kamal Ahmed and Deputy Business Editor, James Quinn.
It’s always great to meet these types of journalists and better understand how they work. As often happens in these types of sessions, quite a lot of the discussion turns to how PR people can improve their success rate when pitching to them. So while I’m sure you’ve heard some this before, I’ve captured their advice for how best to engage with the business team at the Sunday Telegraph:
• Always provide ideas and themes that affect not just one company but several.
• Understand what stories will make it into the Sunday’s business news and only pitch these stories. The way to do this is to read the paper each week.
• Know when to pitch. There are two editorial meetings each week – a features meeting early on Tuesday morning and a news meeting on Thursday morning. Features are theme-led and ideas come from journalists as well as specialists and PRs. Ideas for features should be provided as early in the week as possible to ensure the best chances of coverage and Thursday is the best day to contact the team with news ideas. The layout meeting for the Sunday Telegraph business section takes place every Saturday at 11 am.
• Understand which spokesperson to offer. The interview section for the Sunday edition is reserved for top chief executives and leaders across the business spectrum.
• Know your audience. Always bear in mind that the Daily Telegraph is read by chief executives and senior executives, whilst the Sunday Telegraph has a more generalist audience and is read by those looking for a wider take on the week’s business stories. Planning is essential. The Sunday Telegraph’s report on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 for example took the team months of planning and preparation as they were required to take a measured and broad perspective on the stories that would appeal to a wide audience. For PRs this means early pitching to increase the chances to be included in the next big story.
• Consider video content when selling in a story (for example video interviews). It could significantly support the sell-in of a story and give you the opportunity to get coverage online as well as in the print edition, significantly increasing your potential audience.
That’s an interesting post. The key thing is to think from the reader’s point of view I think and give them what they want, but it can be hard to think of stories in those terms at first.
And of course we always have to look at it from the client’s perspective too – what do they want to get across? That’s where the magic comes in, finding the angle that meets the requirements of the audience/editors as well as the client