Publicity Club of Chicago Taps the Wires

By Sue Masaracchia-Roberts

Get the news out on the wires! Led by moderator Peter Kendall, deputy metropolitan editor for the Chicago Tribune, MarketWatch, Associated Press, US Newswire and Reuters were queried about what they look for from public relations professionals that make the headlines sizzle.

PCC March luncheon panel (from left): Peter Kendall, Steve Kerch, Jim Webb, Robin Weiner, Peter Bohan (photo by Ted Lacey)

MODERATOR

Peter Kendall
Deputy Metropolitan Editor (city editor)

PANELISTS

Steve Kerch
Personal Finance Editor and Real Estate Reporter
MarketWatch

Robin Weiner
USNewswire
Director of Photography (former AP Photog)

Peter Bohan
Midwest News Editor
Reuters

Jim Webb
Chicago News Editor
Associated Press

PROGRAM SUMMARY

The panelists included personal finance and real estate editor Steve Kerch with MarketWatch; Associated Press Chicago news editor Jim Webb; US Newswire Director of Photography Robin Weiner; and Reuters Midwest news editor Peter Bohan.

Peter Kendall

Deputy Metropolitan Editor for the Chicago Tribune, Peter Kendall also serves as the paper’s education, science and "Metro Sunday" editor. Prior to his tenure at the Tribune, Kendall worked for City News Bureau for two years.

Steve Kerch

Steve Kerch contributes segments on real estate and personal finance for the CBS radio network and is personal finance and real estate editor for MarketWatch, overseeing personal finance coverage. A veteran of 26 years in journalism, Kerch spent several years as the real estate group editor for the Chicago Tribune. MarketWatch online boasts nine million visitors per month, offering wire services in real times on the web and in print.

The focus of MarketWatch is breaking business news for investors and professionals in the financial services arena, as well as on public companies. Stock tickers are included in the stories they cover which include analysis, personal finance and real estate features. These include several subchannels that include retiring, consumer banking, healthcare and life and finances. Since this is an electronic medium, Kerch emphasized that information should be submitted electronically. E-mail is preferred but brief phone calls are accepted.

"It is not easy to know from day to day what is relevant," said Kerch, "but information needs relevance. Check our site!" If someone calls, "If I seem abrupt, don’t take it personally."

For images, Kerch prefers streaming videos. MarketWatch will take visual images from websites.

Jim Webb

Since 2000, Jim Webb has been the Chicago news editor for the Associated Press (AP), covering Illinois, after serving as an AP correspondent out of St. Louis, Kentucky and Philadelphia.

Webb explained that AP, a not-for-profit news cooperative, is the largest general news service with broad coverage. With 240 bureaus around the world and offices in every state, it produces a lot of content, serving 1700 daily newspapers as well as a wide array of radio and television stations, as well as websites like Crain’s and the Chicago Tribune. As it has so many cooperative arrangements, where it can pick up stories from a number of other sources and re-write them, AP can afford to be choosy as to what it covers. Some of the general assignment beats include health and sports.

"We may not have the time or the people to do stories, but we can pick a story up from another paper and use it," said Webb. "If you pitch AP, don’t pitch your story to other places." However he added that exclusives don’t hold much sway and he prefers stories that are not embargoed.

If a story is tied to an event, Webb directed PR professionals to pitch AP locally. However, he warns that "you need to tell us if you are pitching more than one bureau. Be honest with us. Don’t send your pitch to two bureaus at the same time or it will kill your pitch."

Most of AP’s features spring from spot news. Less than ten percent of their stories come from pitches. This makes sense based on the fact that most of their stories stem from breaking news and are timely and brief. PR people need to understand AP and its mission before pitching to them. Stories should have statewide appeal at least, however national or international appeal is best. Check out its website at www.ap.org <http://www.ap.org> and note the links from the site.

For crisis communications, time is of the essence. "Get back to us quickly when we need you," said Webb. "Time is crucial." Webb added that if they "cannot beat another media source, it’s great to be able to pick up stories from them. It’s our safety net, being able to pick up stories from other newspapers, cut it down and re-write it. To our advantage, we can crib from member newspapers."

Most of AP’s writers are around the country rather than in New York. If stories originate here, he’ll let PR people know if AP is interested.

He tells PR pros not to ask him to put stories on the wire as they sell their product to businesses and focus on pure journalism. "We determine what goes on our wires. With photos, we use mostly head shots of executives."

However, Webb is not interested in stories about celebrities in town promoting something. He said his interest is in, "stories with a local context for examples of what is going on, beginnings of national trends, things that we can take nationally."

Robin Weiner

Robin Weiner is the director of photography for US Newswire, a division of MediaLink Worldwide. Before joining US Newswire, she shot pictures for newspapers in Virginia, then freelanced for AP and the San Francisco Chronicle, as well as for a variety of other major news publications. US Newswire is different from the Business Wire and PR Newswire in the fact that it caters to corporations, non-for-profit organizations and government agencies. The agency will send someone to come to an event, record the event and take photos, then offers to send the photos to the wires and archives the photos. They have a contract with AP and can distribute photos on AP Photo Express.

She is interested in receiving photos they cannot find or cover themselves, like if someone notices and shoots a giant "nose" standing in line at Starbucks. "Humor is difficult to capture as a great photo. However, if you can back up your story with a great visual, like an Elf appearing with Tony the Tiger, illustrating the partnership between Keebler and Kraft, that’s great." For US Newswire, she works with her clients to create a compelling image that will enhance their story.

Peter Bohan

As Midwest news editor for Reuters, Peter Bohan leads a team of more than 30 journalists, covering corporate, Treasury, commodities, energy and other news for 14 Midwest states. Joining Reuters in 1983 as a reporter and copy editor in Chicago, Bohan has worked around the world, including serving a stint in Hong Kong and in Singapore as bureau chief, working to expand coverage of the commodities industry.

According to Bohan, Reuters is the world’s largest multimedia agency. Subscribers hail from the financial sector, including banks, investors, traders, and those involved in treasury notes and commodities. Its specialty is corporate and general news, options and municipal bonds. Reuters delivers news over a secure system private network and serves its clientele, providing the latest information. On occasion, with breaking stories, it will use local journalists until it can get its own people onto the scene.

Reuters boasts 197 bureaus, 30,000 headlines a day in 19 languages. "We need to be selective and focused on what paying clients want to see," said Bohan. While he encourages PR people to send information, "if you’ve seen it in the Tribune, don’t contact us."

He further urges professionals to contact him with stories and he’ll send them to the appropriate person, but "cut the jargon. Needing to cut through the obfuscation and ferreting through the clutter slows the communication of information and pushes releases into the trash," said Bohan. "We want to talk to sources directly; give us access. Provide us with cell phone numbers and after hours contact information." Bohan added, "The internet has moved us all onto a more level playing field of competition. Direct us. We can do webcasts and conference calls." He prefers exclusive stories.

While some stories originate with AP, these are mostly "those not import enough to spend resources on but we do want access to." He gave the recent killings of Judge Lefkow’s family as an example, saying that they picked up the information from the Tribune and credited them since they didn’t have the same investigative information available to them. About 70 percent of the stories are original. In Chicago, these stories are generated by one full-time business writer and one part-time writer.

"We’ll sort out the coverage and write things in real time and do things where the person is located," added Bohan. ""Datelines rule."

[Return to top.]

(Index to articles about monthly luncheons)