Patch.com, the uber-local news site that operates in more than 800 communities  throughout the U.S., wants to hear your story ideas for a new series called ”Dispatches: The Changing American Dream.”

Stories will run occasionally and will focus on how residents and businesses are dealing with issues such as lack of jobs, foreclosures and debt.

“We don’t think there’s one American Dream, but a multitude of American Dreams which a multitude of people are working toward.  Looking out across the country, we see businesses holding their breath deciding whether to expand; college graduates returning home because they can’t find jobs; and senior citizens bringing boarders into their homes to help pay their bills.”

For example, today, my local Patch for Port Washington/Saukville, Wisconsin included a story on the handful of new businesses that have sprung up in downtown Port Washington, a small town of about 10,000 residents, despite the flat commercial real estate market throughout the country.  But Patch doesn’t only want business-related stories. It sounds like they’re open to ideas from the nonprofit and government sectors, too.   

“But we also see bold new volunteer efforts, inspiring stories of local businesses that succeed because they innovated, and locals who’ve taken these trying times as a signal to engage more, not less, in their government.”     
    

How to Pitch

Pitching Patch is easy because editors will be far more receptive to your ideas than editors at traditional media outlets like local newspapers and magazines.

Go to the Patch site and click on one of these 22 states: California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin. A window will open and show you the communities within that state where it has websites. Click on your community and you’ll find the editor’s name and a link to the email address at the top.

I’ve written here about several ways to pitch the Patch editors. If your story is also ideal for traditional media, bloggers and other new media, but you feel uncomfortable pitching, or your current pitches don’t bring results, join me on Thursday, Aug. 18, for a 90-minute webinar on “A Simple 5-Part Formula for Delivering the Perfect Media Pitch and Hitting it Out of the Park” from 3 to 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time. Can’t make it because of a previous commitment?  Register anyway and you’ll receive the video replay and other materials within 72 hours.

You can use my formula as a cheat sheet every time you pitch.  And I’ll give you 27 story angles you can steal on days when the idea well is dry.

Register here.  

Have you pitched Patch? If so, what was the result? Share your tips here.

If you need local publicity, and you live in one of 19 states in the United States, or the District of Columbia, Patch.com is almost begging for your pitch.

A memo from Patch editor-in-chief Brian Farnham outlines a plan to increase traffic by increasing article production.

Patch currently requires every site to post a minimum of four times per day, but many are not. Hence, the memo.

Patch covers California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

It loves news about new businesses, community events, local government, crime, items for the events calendar, columns from local residents and government officials, news tips, and the all-important and often overlooked photos and videos.

This is the perfect time to pitch Patch for another reason.  AOL Inc, which owns Patch, is launching 33 sites in New Hampshire, Iowa and South Carolina, key states that play an early role in the U.S. presidential election.

How to Pitch Patch

1. Build a relationship with Patch writers and editors. Spend time at the Patch site for your community, and identify who is responsible for your local news. The editor’s name and email address is under the logo at the top of the page.
2. Email the editor and ask questions. I’ve found Patch writers to be incredibly helpful and friendly.
3. Many Patch writers are former journalists. And all journalists love to report news first. Keep Patch in mind when hear a newsy item about something in your community.
4. Add Patch to your media database. Every time you write a press release, ask if the content is something that Patch would like.
5. Is your business doing something new? It’s much easier to get business stories onto Patch than it is to get your story told in your local business journal, which usually requires multiple sources.
6. Don’t forget about stand-alone photos with captions, and video. (See How to Use Photos & Graphics in a Publicity Campaign)

One of the other reasons Patch is such a super tool in a publicity campaign is because people can sign up for the Patch newsletter in their community, and receive email alerts.  I’ll often stop what I’m doing when I see the Port Washington/Saukville (Wisconsin) newsletter arrive in my Inbox.

What kind of publicity have you gotten from Patch? Do you have any pitching tips to add to my list?

Pittsburgh PR guy Chris Martin, who follows me on Twitter, says he wants to do some friendly wagering before Sunday’s Super Bowl.

He’s from Pittsburgh, and a Steelers fan and manages Martin Public Relations.  I’m a Proud Cheesehead, as my Twitter profile states. We’re both in the PR industry.

We tossed around a few ideas, and I suggested throwing it out to you for REALLY fun ideas.

Can you think of a creative wager? Are you betting against a Steelers fan? If so, what?

Hey, if it’s really a good wager, consider pitching it to the media and bloggers. The Milwaukee and Pittsburgh art museums, for example, received a glut of publicity for their friendly wager of artwork.

What can Chris and I bet?

Here’s another website to add to your media list consider if you want publicity for local news.

It’s Patch.com and it already covers more than 600 communities and neighborhoods in California, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

The site, owned by AOL and based in New York, hires professional journalists and contracts with freelancers to cover local news and events, business and government, police and fire news, and more.  Users can submit their own announcements, photos and reviews, and participate in discussions.

Here are Patch’s AdvantagesThese have been mentioned in several articles I’ve read the last few weeks, including this one in today’s L.A. Times.

• It hires experienced journalists, many of whom have been laid off by local newspapers and are already familiar with the communities they cover.
• Patch makes it easy to find whoever covers your community.  Just go to Patch and click on the state where you live, then choose the community where Patch already has a presence.  Contact information for every Patch editor is at the top of every local site.  All Patch contributors can be contacted via email through the local site.
• It encourages participation.  Send a news tip, put an event on the calendar or submit an announcement.  If you’re a business owner who wants to be listed,  just email them. Update: Submit information yourself via the “add it!” button at the bottom of directory search.”
• It fills a void, created by the demise of many local newspapers.

Here are the Disadvantages

• It pays many journalists far less than what they made before, and Some editors have suffered from burnout and left. Update: Janine Iamunno, senior communications director for Patch, said 3 out of 4 Patch employees make  more money, or the same, as in their previous position.
• Critics say it can strangle many other smaller local websites.  But I think competition helps, not hurts, the news consumer.
• It needs to make enough money to support all those journalists, and it’s growth might be too aggressive.

But you won’t hear me complaining.

Do Your Research

Most important: Local means local!  The focus is very specific—news about the community or neighborhood served by the Patch site.

A smart Publicity Hound will want to develop story ideas that are directly related to a Patch.com community.  As always, take the time to review each site before developing the pitch.  Better yet, introduce yourself to the Patch editor.

If you have experience with getting news placed on Patch, or you have other comments to add, share them here.

News is breaking all around you.

Here are 6 tips on how to generate publicity from breaking news.

Update: We’ll be discussing these tips and many others during the webinar “How to Tie Your Story Pitch to Breaking News and Make the Media Interview YOU” tomorrow, Wednesday, July 21.

1. The local angle. If you’re the “local angle” to a national breaking news story, let the media know.  Example: Coffee prices nationwide skyrocket.  You own a coffee bar.  How will you deal with the price increase?  Let your local newspapers and TV stations know. (This blog has an entire sub-category on the local angle.)

If you’re pitching a story idea to a Spanish-language radio station, remember that the Hispanic market is diverse.

If you’re planning to treat all stations the same, and deliver the same one-size-fits-all pitch, you’re doomed even before you begin.

Dean Thompson, media relations associate at News Generation, a PR firm that specializes in radio media tours, offers these pitching tips in the March 16 issue of PRWeek:

•  Provide information relevant to the geographic region and the demographics that a station reaches.
    
• Audio news releases, public service announcements and interviews must be written and positioned for specific audiences.
    
• Don’t send the same pitch to a South Florida station serving mostly Cuban or South American audiences as well as to a southwest Texas radio station serving a largely Mexican population.
      
• When pitching, include a specific reason for pitching an Hispanic audience. 

Here’s my related tip: When pitching an idea, you get extra points for supplying contact information of somebody within that radio market who agrees to be interviewed.

Tying celebrities to your news story can generate publicity you never dreamed of. But if the celebrity responds, the publicity can multiply.

That’s what happened to Elliott’s Hardware in Dallas, Texas yesterday when former President George W. Bush stopped in for a one-hour visit, bought a few items and joked that he was looking for a job. The Associated Press, which distributed the original story to its member media outlets when the hardware store offered Bush a job, distributed yesterday’s story after the visit, and it appeared, once again, in many newspapers and at news sites.

Here are three tips about piggybacking onto celebrity news, taken from my “Special Report #50: How to Pibbyback onto Celebrity News to Promote Your Product, Service, Cause or Issue”:

1. Sponsor a contest that piggybacks off celebrity news.

For as long as I can remember, the tabloids have been reporting on Oprah’s roller-coaster weight. First it’s up, then it’s down, then it’s up, then it’s down. If you’re a weight loss expert, you can sponsor a contest called “How Oprah Can Take off Those Last 20 Pounds—Forever.” Then write a press release and post it online. Or if you don’t want to go to the trouble of sponsoring a contest, and you can still find a tie-in, go with it.

That’s what Author Laura K. Bryant did. She wrote a press release about her book, “Trust Yourself to Transform Your Body: A Woman’s Guide to Health and Weight Loss Without Diets” and used a clever tie-in to Oprah. (You can read the release which is part of Lesson 50 in my free tutorial “89 Ways to Write Powerful Press Releases.”)

“I sent the press release to all the local news stations in Chicago,” she said. “This particular release got an immediate (within 2 minutes of it being sent) call from a WGN News producer, who requested my media kit. Once the kit was received, my book was highlighted on WGN News, as a ‘Hot Summer Read.’”

2. Piggyback your stories onto hot movie titles.

When the movie “Anger Management” was in theaters, I saw all sorts of stories that tied into that title. Ditto with the “Mission: Impossible” movies. Sometimes all you have to do is incorporate a hot movie title into your pitch and you’ll catch the media’s attention. Example: Trying to lose weight to fit into that new bikini? It isn’t Mission: Impossible.

3. Piggyback onto a network Movie of the Week.

Keep your eyes on the big network movies during sweeps months in May, November and February. Pitch story ideas that piggyback off movies. For example, when “The Burning Bed” with Farrah Fawcett was a major TV movie in 1984, I remember the local women’s abuse shelter in my community was the lead story on the local news that night, right after the movie ended, because it tied into the movie. If your company or nonprofit is “the local angle” to a big TV movie, contact the TV station that’s airing the movie. You could be the lead story on the 10 or 11 o’clock news that night. Also contact the TV stations if you want to weigh in with an opinion about a controversial movie.

This month’s guest blogger Mark Macias, author of the book “Beat the Press: Your Guide to Managing the Media,” shares terrific tips on how businesses can grab media attention. How about using his questions below as a checklist every few months?

The story ideas you’ll generate are just as good for bloggers, ezine editors and other “new media” as they are for traditional media. Mark has worked as an executive producer with WNBC, a senior producer with WCBS, producer with NBC and KTVK in Phoenix, and investigative producer with American Journal. You can read more chapter excerpts from his book on how to pitch the media at his website.

* * *

By Mark Macias

It’s the one question every person wants to know. How do the news producers and newspaper editors decide what to print and publish?

Most people ask this question like there is a magical formula that scientifically reveals whether a story should be pursed or scrapped. If it were this easy to identify news stories, you can bet the formula would have been hacked and posted on the Internet by now. The fact is, news selection is an art, and just like any other profession involving creativity, opinions and experiences, it is subjective to where you stand.

If you want a story written about you or your business, you need to first identify what is different, new or unique about your story. News is based on the root “new,” which is something no publicist should ever forget.

Are you helping underprivileged children in a way that others are ignoring? Is your business contributing to the local community in a unique way we might not expect? Are you about to accomplish a feat where others have failed? The more you can clarify and focus your pitch, the better odds you will have of getting your story idea approved by the news organization.

How to identify story ideas

You can help discover your newsworthy element by asking yourself the following questions:

—What is different about my business?

—How does my business help the public and why is that service unique?

—Is there something timely about my business or product?

—Is there a personal story to tell about my business, like maybe a grandfather is passing the 75-year-old family business onto his grandchildren in a public ceremony? Or maybe the owner is battling cancer and running the business at the same time.

—Is there a new trend arising in my business field that will affect the pocket books of consumers? For example, is the rising cost of wheat starting to put a damper on profits for bagel shop or Italian restaurant owners? Will my business soon be forced to raise prices on the menus because the price of wheat keeps rising?

—Have any trade organizations recognized my business as a leader in innovation that will help shape the future? If so, what is that innovation and how will it change lives?

Finding a unique angle is not as difficult as it may sound. You just need to open your mind to timely events that impact and influence sales of your product or service. If you own a fashion or jewelry store, try to link your product to high-profile events like the Academy Awards or the Grammy Awards. If your business is geared towards a niche audience, like traveling business executives, scan the headlines in the business sections of various newspapers for possible tie-ins to current events.

Define the story

Not properly defining the story is one of the biggest mistakes most publicists make.

Your success with pitching depends greatly on how well you define that story because in many cases, you may only get one shot at pitching your story idea. You can focus your story by understanding and applying the five W’s (who, what, when, where, why and how).

Who is this story about? Who is the character in the center of the story? If you are pitching an organization, business or nonprofit, you must identify a person to revolve the story around because the best stories involve people. You will improve your chances of coverage by identifying a sympathetic character that viewers and readers can relate to.

What is this story about? What is unique about it? What is different? What is the conflict? What is the story you want to tell? By identifying the “What” you will have an edge in pitching the story because your story idea will be more focused.

Where is this story taking place? Does the location have any value or importance in the community? A diner in Iowa has little national news value, unless it is a presidential election year when all of the candidates are pressing the flesh with patrons over ham and eggs. Take a moment to examine your entire surroundings before pitching the story because you might uncover something that increases the value of the story idea.

When does your story take place? Does it have any timely components? Will your story take place on a single night or day? Is your story relevant at a certain time of the month? All of these questions could make your story timely, which will increase the value of your story. Why should anyone care about your story? Why is this story happening?

Why are people coming to your event or why are people buying your product or service? Once you identify why your story is important to the public, you have focused your pitch down to the core and uncovered why your story is newsworthy.

How is your story, business, service or product changing lives? How are you helping people? How will your business or product save people money or better their lives? Not every story has a “how” factor, but it is still important to ask yourself this question.

The more you understand the definition and value of “newsworthy” the better chance you will have of getting media coverage for you or your business. And once you are successfully pitching story ideas, you are better able to shape the message and spin the media into your favor.

Mark Macias is a journalist working and living in New York City.

If you speak for free or for a fee, and you’re trying to generate media attention in towns where you speak, steal a great idea from motivational speaker Terry Hershey of Vashon, Wash.

When he speaks in communities throughout the United Staties, he tries to find a local angle that ties into his topic—something he can pitch to the media so they’ll view him as a local story, not as just another speaker who breezes into town one day and is out the next and wants free publicity.

Over the weekend, when I was visiting in Columbus, I saw him on the local NBC station’s Sunday morning news program. The segment showed him speaking at the First Community Church in Columbus as part of the church’s “Spiritual Seekers” series. It included archived video of Jake Porter, the 17-year-old special needs student from Northwest High School in McDermott, Ohio, who scored a touchdown for his high school football team several years ago during the last home game of the season because both teams were willing to change the rules. You can read the heart-warming story here and then watch the video here.

McDermott is about five counties from Columbus but close enough that, I suspect, it’s in the Columbus TV market which makes the Jake Porter tie-in the local angle. It was the perfect story for a weekend news program because it wasn’t competing with the newsier stories that break during the week. Terry said he received several emails from people in the Columbus area who saw the segment.

He offers these three tips to speakers seeking publicity in towns where they speak:

Rule #1: Speak to a person, not a department

When you call a TV station, ask to be forwarded to the person who is in charge of deciding which stories the news department will cover, and pitch the local angle. Include that person’s contact information in your records and start building the relationship. (My teleseminar series on ‘How to Create a Media Plan” includes a segment on how to create a targeted media contact list.)     

Rule #2:  Tell a story.

The media love stories, Terry says. Any time you can tie your presentation to a local heart-warming, enlightening or inspirational story, you’ll score points with the media.

Rule #3: Do the media’s work for them

“Media people hate a speaker who wants a one-win story that benefits only them. You need to make it a win-win: a win for the station and a win for you.”

Here are three other tips, excerpted from my  “Special Report #21: 67 Great Publicity Tips for Professional Speakers”:

—Offer to help publicize your programs every time you book a speaking engagement. That includes mailing press releases to local media, being available for radio interviews and letting local reporters know about your program, in case they want to attend. Meeting planners will appreciate this thoughtful gesture. Take advantage of my free email tutorial on how to write a press release.
 
—Every time you speak before a group, offer to submit a short summary of your presentation for the group’s newsletter. Don’t forget to send your photo. It gets you in front of those you just spoke to as well as those who missed you the first time around. Many groups also send their newsletters to the media. Be sure the last paragraph tells people what you do and how to get in touch with you. Include your URL.

— Call the advertising department of every newspaper and magazine you want to get into and ask for a copy of their editorial calendar. It’s a free listing of all the special topics and special sections coming up during the calendar year. It will tip you off to sections where your story idea would be a good fit, so you can query the editor weeks and even months ahead. If you’re going to be speaking in that town, be sure to mention that in your pitch. 

Here’s how a locally owned independent hardware store in Dallas, Texas piggybacked off President Bush leaving office and generated a ton of national publicity when the Associated Press picked up the story.

Elliott’s Hardware in Dallas invited former President George W. Bush to spend his retirement working as a part-time greeter at its Maple Avenue store. It mailed an invitation to Bush and also bought a full-page ad on Page 7B of Thursday’s Dallas Morning News.

“Our greeters are a legendary part of our customer service,” said Kyle Walters, Elliott’s Hardware president & CEO. “And we are offering the position to Mr. Bush in all sincerity. We think it would be a great fit for him as he settles back into life in Dallas.”

Job perks include:

–A flexible part-time schedule (to allow travel to Crawford)

–An opportunity to keep up on his people skills

–A seven-mile commute between the store and his new home

–Ample parking (including space for his security detail)

–Employee discount (for any projects Mrs. Bush may have on the
“Honey-Do” list)

–The chance to wear a company name tag with a big red W on it.

Elliott’s said it would be willing to let Bush try out the position for a day to see how he likes it before committing.

The complete greeter letter was posted at numerous blogs and websites including The Huffington Post. Bush, who hasn’t yet moved into his new home in Dallas, intends to focus on construction of his presidential library and think tank at the nearby Southern Methodist University.

Note to Elliott’s: This story is clever enough that you could have gotten the same amount of publicity without the full-page ad.