What happens if you’ve identified the right category of media outlets for your story idea, but can’t decide which specific media outlet to pitch?

Simple. Tweak your pitch to come up with more than one slant to the story.

For instance, going back to the idea found in the previous tip (Politis PR Tip #33), let’s say Berkeley is coming out with a new line of hooks. (For argument’s sake, let’s say these new hooks are made out of titanium.)

Chances are Berkeley will launch packages of snelled hooks (hooks that are sold in small packages and are pre-tied onto short leaders so they’re easy to attach and detach from one’s line), as well as hooks sold individually without any pre-tied leader.

Naturally, the availability of titanium hooks from Berkeley would be newsworthy in and of itself  — at least to us angler types.

Such a news announcement would be a natural fit for just about any media outlet focused on fishing.

However, given that titanium is also quite strong for its relative weight, you could probably also find specific interest in any fishing outlet focused on fly fishing. Why? Because using hooks made out of titanium could create new advantages for fly tying aficionados.

Not only this, but if you had enough lead time, you could probably provide titanium hooks to editors on staff at a fly fishing magazine in advance of the actual announcement so they could

1. Tie flies using the new titanium hooks, and
2. Try out these “titanium flies” to see if they performed any better than “typical” hooks.

In other words, if you tweak the story idea, you might get two or more bigger and more impressive story results on the same news — even if you’re working with competing media outlets.