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● Introduction & Index ● What is PR ● Job Expectations ● Types of Media ● Building Relationships ● Media, Hams & FCC Rules ● The Basic News Release ● Interviews and Live ● Making your own show ● Easy P.R. ● Public Service Events ● Piggy-back to Events ● Pictures NOW! ● P.R. Research Aids ● Making Friends ● ARES® PIO ● Final Exam Information Next Page

## Section 4 - Types of Media Their unique needs Backgrounders Goals of this section: Identify several types of news media and potential outlets Understand the changes happening in news media Discuss the need to customize materials for the targeted outlet Know about the basic information sheets available for PIOs Briefly discuss viral networking Types of Media “The Media” is an overused term which conjures up this image of a monolithic beast feeding on a never-ending stream of news stories. While there may be some truth to this image (especially the appetite part), a more fitting image is the cartoon of the small fish eating a plant, with a line of ever-larger fish behind it, each waiting to eat the next-smaller one. For our purposes, though, this media “food chain” is good. Before we “meet the media,” though, let’s take a look at its basic “food” — news itself. What is news, anyway? News, in its most basic definition, is anything important or unusual that happens, especially anything that can directly affect the lives of the people reading, watching or listening to a particular news source. And the more people affected, the bigger the news is. People ask why there’s so much bad news in the papers. Mostly because something that goes right usually isn’t news. If you go to work in the morning and get there on time, in one piece, that’s not news, that’s normal. If you get into an accident on the way to work, that’s news to your family and co-workers, but not to too many other people. If you’re part of a 20-car pileup and 20,000 people are late to work because of it, that’s real news. A newspaper that’s full of only bad news won’t sell. So most editors are actively looking for “good news” stories to balance out some of the bad. If your story is important or unusual, it also qualifies as news.