Media relations lessons that are out of this world

If you’ll permit me to open this article by channeling Captain Obvious: The media landscape continues to change, and rapidly. If I asked a fresh-out-of-college PR practitioner today to pitch a reporter at Recode, they would A) have no idea what I was talking about; B) not be able to do so…because Recode isn’t a brand anymore, despite the fact that it was a major player in tech media just a few years ago. Entire publications vanish overnight, sweeping layoffs decimate newsrooms, and new titles emerge to challenge for the crown of “most impactful media outlet.”

It can be dizzying to keep up with, but as with most of life’s challenges, this also presents an opportunity for a savvy comms pro. The key is understanding that the core principles of good communications and media relations haven’t changed—we just have to know how to apply them in this ever-shifting landscape.

Let’s look at two examples of what I mean.

The value of non-traditional media outlets

As we learned from The Lion King, we’re all bound by the Circle of Life, and media outlets are no exception. Even as publications like Recode are absorbed into other entities or die out altogether, new outlets rise to take their place. In an encouraging sign for the future of the media industry, many of these newer entrants are quickly gaining traction and dedicated followings, making them valuable targets for PR pros.

One hallmark we’re seeing for these newer, non-traditional outlets is that they are often fairly niche in their focus. Whereas before, news organizations sought to go broad with their coverage, these outlets find their area of expertise and dive in deeply. No, these outlets don’t have the widespread cultural awareness of The New York Times or the same audience numbers. But they do have an engaged, highly-targeted following—and the truth is that getting your message in front of the right audience has always been a more valuable comms strategy than snagging a tiny mention in a “big name” publication for water cooler bragging rights.

An example is The Generalist, a Substack newsletter by Mario Gabriele that focuses on the tech landscape largely through the lens of successful companies and VC firms. While this four-year-old platform might “only” have 106K subscribers, they are influential readers in the tech sphere, drawn to The Generalist because of its in-depth interviews with heavy hitters like Reid Hoffman, Kleiner Perkins, Plaid, Stripe, and more. The “print-first” (digital, but you get the point) style of The Generalist harkens back to the coveted multi-thousand-word feature articles of yesteryear’s news magazines, making it popular with an impressive set of readers and companies.

For an even more “new media” spin, check out creator-anchored YouTube channels. We recently worked with the “Ellie in Space” channel, created by former broadcast journalist Eliana Sheriff, for our client Impulse Space. The interview she did with Impulse’s CEO got 50k views in less than two days (it’s currently sitting at about 95k views). Even though the average member of the public may not be familiar with this channel, it has a highly engaged audience in a target demographic, making it a great outlet for companies in this area.

Overall, the increased accessibility to start your own channel has led to many excellent new media opportunities, but it also means that there are some lower-quality options mixed in with the good. When you can’t rely on name recognition alone to determine if something is worthwhile, it’s imperative to fall back on the core principles of good PR.?

The three benchmarks we use are:

• What’s the reach, and what’s the audience? The goal is to share the message with as many members of a target group as possible. How well does this outlet match that goal?
• Have any of my client’s peers been featured? Looking to see if other peer companies or spokespeople have been featured is a good indicator of how well-established and respected an outlet is.
• Will this give me the type of coverage I want? With journalists stretched so thin these days, in-depth profiles are much less common at major media outlets. If you’re looking to tell an involved, nuanced story, you’re likely willing to sacrifice some viewership numbers for the chance to get a meaty feature story in a smaller outlet.

Getting into a legacy outlet like The New York Times has never been the single marker for success in PR/comms, and that’s even less true today when the name of the game is reaching a targeted audience. Not all new media opportunities are created equal, but if you apply smart judgment, you can find huge wins in unexpected places.

The opportunity of a 24/7, always-on news cycle

CNN opened the Pandora’s box of a 24/7 news network in 1980, and since then, the news cycle has become increasingly voracious, aided and abetted by our always-on, ever-connected society of smartphones and social media. As PR pros, we tend to largely see the negative impacts of this situation: it’s challenging to get any attention for a story before it’s swept away by The Next Thing; an executive gaffe on Twitter (sorry, X) can be immediately heard ‘round the world; crisis management needs to happen at the speed of typing.

All of these things are true. But our extreme interconnectedness also provides opportunities for new types of storytelling. This was recently illustrated brilliantly by the team at Astrobotic during their Peregrine Mission One lunar landing attempt. The first in a series of missions under the NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, Peregrine Mission One ultimately failed to attempt a lunar landing due to a propellant leak; instead, it was intentionally deorbited and burned up in Earth’s atmosphere after about 10 days in space gathering data.

The process from discovering the initial anomaly to abandoning the landing attempt could have been shrouded in secrecy with a traditional, tight-lipped crisis comms approach. Instead, Astrobotic provided 23 press release style updates throughout the mission, keeping the public informed on the latest, even when the latest was “we aren’t sure what’s going on.”

The result was headlines like “Astrobotic Has Set A New Standard For Space Mission Transparency” from industry outlet NASA Watch and positive commentary like the below excerpt from an article in Scientific American:

“They have flawlessly updated us when they did not need to on a mission that is otherwise a failure,” adds Laura Forczyk, founder and executive director of the space industry consulting firm Astralytical. “They made us rally around a lunar lander that was never going to land. Because of their frequent updates, they made us care.”

By taking advantage of the 24/7 news cycle and social media, Astrobotic took what could have been a one-off story of failure and instead brought their audience along on a compelling journey that highlighted the ingenuity of the teams who made lemonade out of lemons. They succeeded by sticking to a core principle of good communication: treat your audience like you would want to be treated. That maxim has been true since long before the dawn of social media, but by applying it in this new media landscape, the Astrobotic team notched a great comms win.

How to handle the changing tides of media

Nothing stays the same in life except change, so we can expect that even these shifts in the media landscape will soon be overtaken by new normals. Communicators can stay anchored amid the shifting tides by remembering the core principles of good comms work and strategically applying them to the latest opportunity.?

Hannah S. is an Account Director (and title pun creator extraordinaire) with The Bulleit Group