He (or she) is always cramming for an upcoming exam. That "exam" is next story he must produce for his newspaper, his TV station or his radio show.

It is job of reporter to become an expert in your subject just long enough to produce story.

The reporter is, by trade, a generalist. With rare exceptions, he has no specialized knowledge, other than training that allows him to transform a set of facts into a news story that will captivate his audience for a few second or a few minutes.

Thus reporter is highly depedent upon real experts -- just like you -- to provide information that will become his story.

The flack will toss information at reporter in a careless fashion, often overwhelming journalist with trivia that obscures story.

But PR Rainmakers understand reporter's plight. We use it to our advantage.

We spoonfeed story to reporter. We make it easy for reporter to see story, to gather facts, to digest information, to organize information, to structure story and to execute story.

How?

1. Offer as many news "elements" as possible. If you've read my book "PR Rainmaker," you know that there are four elements in news. These are change, conflict, problem and aberration. All news is composed of these elements. You want to make certain that your story touches on at least one, and if at all possible all four. Without at least one, you simply do not have news to offer.

2. Craft a story line. Stories have heros. They have villains. They have conflicts that are as yet unresolved. You want to position your company as hero in a conflict that has real meaning for reader, and thus for reporter.

Out of all those times phone rings, how many times do you stop what you're doing to answer it?

I'll bet it's a lot. 90%? 95%? I don't know for sure but I'm guessing it's up there.

I know because I used to stop whatever I was doing to answer it. Didn't matter what I was doing, I would just stop - and answer phone.

Until one day something dawned on me:

I don't HAVE to answer it! It's not required. I can let it ring and let my answering machine get it. After all, that's what it's designed to do.

It used to annoy heck out of my wife when phone would ring - right next to me - and I would ignore it (inasmuch as you can ignore a ringing phone). She would rush for phone saying "Geez . . . aren't you gonna answer that?". And I'd ask "Why?"

And for a long time I wondered why people stop whatever they're doing and answer their phone.

The answer is simple - because we're conditioned to, that's why. Sure, you could argue - Because it could be important; What if it's my broker with a hot tip; What if it's an emergency.

The bottom line is, though, it's all conditioning. Just look around you on any given day in any given location. People can't even leave home without a telephone!

Conditioning.

I would love to be able to get my readers to just stop whatever they were doing when my newsletter hits their mailbox and read it from start to finish. Better still, to purchase products I recommend. Wouldn't that be great?

Well, we may never be able to achieve that level of conditioning, but there are some things you can do to help stop conditioned response of just deleting your emails before they're read.