News wire services are still alive and reasonably well: AP, Reuters, Dow Jones, Bloomberg, and so on. They were never directly reliant on advertising revenue for survival (though their customers were/are), and they have found new life on the Internet, where their 24/7 service dovetails perfectly with the web's insatiable need for news.
The care and feeding of wire services has always been one of the central strategies of any media relations plan I've drawn up, and it should be a central part of yours as well. Here's why: because it's a one-to-many tactic. One interview, one story, gets multiplied countless times as the story is picked up and spread around the media and the Internet.
One of my personal favorite aspects of pitching the news wires is that they are no-nonsense, get-to-the-point journalists. That plays well into my PR style, which is similarly fact-and-figure based and not reliant on spin.
In any case: the inspiration for this tutorial was the report of this memo from from MS&L advising its PR staffers to make a renewed push to land AP stories, in particular in Washington, where so many bureaus have closed to been downsized recently
Agreed, the successful pitching of a story to a newswire potentially brings a story a much larger audience. Where appropriate, we too always include the appropriate wire reporters and bureau chiefs in our outreach plans as this tactic has worked well for us in the past. If your clients all operate in a specific sector, say entertainment, health or technology, building ongoing awareness and a good relationship with the beat reporters at the wire services can pay additional dividends as your clients become expert resources that can be called upon when the reporter is writing a trends piece or wishes to include expert insight in a more broadly focused piece. This indirect coverage can be invaluable and often lends credibility where a more obviously promotional article might be overlooked.
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