It is a fact of life. Accept it now.

All news is affected by whatever else happened that day. All news is relative.

Newspapers have only so many columns to fill. The TV news has only so many minutes to devote. Even Web sites have only so many slots to fill with news of day.

Even on a slow news day, more copy is thrown away than is ever used. More emails are deleted than followed. More faxes are trashed than considered.

There is also a hierarchy to news, especially in mainstream media. Breaking news will supplant soft news, such as features and analyses. News of broad interest will supplant news of specific interest; for example, a tornado that wipes out your downtown area will likely push a suburban school board meeting to back pages, if not out of newspaper entirely.

You can arrange most visual, most intriguing media event possible. But if City Hall is burning down at same time as your event, then that is where news cameras are going to go. The news demands it.

We all know what happened on Sept. 11, 2001: Two passenger jets slammed into World Trade Center, while a third crashed into Pentagon and a fourth was forced to ground in a Pennsylvania field.

Just think how many important and interesting news events were chased out of news media on Sept. 11 and during weeks that followed – not to mention all of soft news features and media events that were canceled.

So how do PR Rainmakers handle this reality? By leaving nothing to chance.

In others words: Always have a Plan B.

This is a very human norm that is rooted in our collective past, when reciprocity was a tool of survival.

And this is why most media outlets forbid their reporters from accepting gifts from public, especially from news sources. The majority of media ban gifts that are valued over a certain limit, generally $25 or so. Almost all news media forbid travel junkets as well.

Editors and producers want no questions to arise concerning any reporter’s fairness and accuracy. Thus, ban on gifts.

But there remains one gift that reporters will gladly accept and Boss will gladly encourage.

That gift is “the scoop.”

The scoop is an exclusive, important story. It is a news item that reporter to beat competition. It can be anything from a tip that city council may change town charter to a document that shows a local CEO is engaged in illegal insider trading.

Any tidbit of information that leads to a scoop is always welcome in a newsroom. Indeed, providing a steady supply of scoops is only way to win a reporter’s heart.

Scoops are what allow reporters to move up in ranks. Scoops are what allow newspaper editors and TV producers to keep their jobs. Scoops are what allow newspapers to attract more readers, TV stations to attract more viewers, radio stations to attract more listeners and Web sites to attract more hits.