This is probably the biggest story I've handled - the extremely sad assisted suicide case of Dr Ann Turner, who ultimately went abroad for help to die with her very caring and supportive family, whom I got to know well and admired for their courage and integrity. The arrangements I put in place for them and the media were sufficient to make this one of the year's biggest stories and it dominated broadcast and print from the moment it broke.  This is a tiny smattering of the coverage, which included many front pages, and a negotiated exclusive with the Sunday Times that weekend. There were ongoing news stories from this despite Dr Turner's death.

This story I researched and offered to the FT on a freelance basis. It was front and inside lead story that weekend, March/April 2007.

This story was looking like it was going to be headed, "no euthanasia in UK". See, for example, this story on the BBC news website. My job was to turn that around. That I accomplished by finding a new story angle and selling this in very quickly... as the headlines below testofy to. It made most newspapers front or leading pages. The ones below are from the Metro, the Guardian and the Daily Mail.

 

 

This front page Daily Telegraph story arose from a briefing we at the NLC (National Lottery Commission) held about the rules the NLC wished to see changed for the lottery licence. Its a fairly minimal story but with the right angle its interesting - it wasn't what Camelot, the Lottery operators who we regulated, wanted but they certainly didn't lose out and as it turned out, the rules were not changed in the way the Commission wished, anyway! A lot of stories one reads are anticipatory and do not come to pass but this will not always be obvious to the reader! Another coda for public sector bodies: often what a public body with a small profile does will be translated into what the Government is doing or planning to make it sound like a bigger story.

Being on the end of breaking news is not easy and sometimes nigh impossible, but you can try things to cushion the impact of what is coming. Example (1) is the Evening Standard story (all other papers picked this up) about a software problem that may have caused millions of Lottery winners to be underpaid. The Commission had to show it had the matter under active investigation and handled this one well. The eventual outcome can be found on the category of Mark's PR notes under burying bad news! (2) This typically lurid headline in the Daily Mail is one we can't see and it bedevils any organisation when its staff or supporters put their foot in it, intentionally or otherwise. Good briefing is the prevention; damage limitation is what comes after. But that depends on the extent of your influence on the source of the story. We made the best fist we could to defend this eminent philosopher Baroness but ultimately the damage was done. (3) The Sunday Express reported gambling hysteria ...well...i think we did get a single phone call.... this story was all headline and no trousers, as the extensive quote from me shows. The issue never raised its head again which is a sure sign it was pointing in the wrong direction at the time. (4) The Daily Express also tried to run some knocking copy against the Lottery Commission - it was open season on us at that time - but again extensive quotes from me provided a helpful balance and context. The lesson from the last two pieces is that the headlines oftyen betray the news story. If you are a casual browser to this web space, take heed!

This story in the Daily Telegraph was a very helpful example of when apparently bad news is actually good news. The story was about the re-branding of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society (or VES) as Dignity in Dying. This was one we needed to communicate so that people understood the name had changed and could accurately find the organisation again rather than thinking there were now two campaign organisations for end of life rights. A small word in the right ear and its not that hard to create a bit of a stir...

The unhappy genesis of this awful but accurate phrase is the stock in trade of many PRs especially in sensitive and controversial businesses (like the nuclear industry and GM Foods for example) where there is an abundance of bad news and a dearth of positive stories. (The trick with positive stories is that largely you have to make them, they don't fall off trees.)  This story was one I was asked to make go away but it had been receiving huge amounts of speculative news since the investigation began into Camelot's improper payments to winners. Through some subtle downplaying of the story in advance, a turn of nice timing, and an absence of colour, we managed to limit what could have been a leading national news story into a sparse collection of NIBs (news in brief). Not quite buried, perhaps, but certainly not eye catching. Just what the spin doctor ordered!

This piece shows a universal truth: that interesting statistics are an excellent medium for news stories. This one is fresh information about the rise in cases of British people with serious or terminal travelling overseas to have help to die. It was reported by the Independent. (Well, 700%...) If you don't have ready statistics, find them or create them! Statistics are a professional passion of mine, and many of my features on Writer's Block draw on original statistical research I've done.

At Dignity in Dying we tried to make the most of a non-existent advertising budget by deploying it when we had a campaign in the news for additional pick-up. This one featuring our campaigner with MS, Debbie Purdy from Bradford, was the only national advert we used in my two and a half years there (2004-2006).

At the Central Customer Service Committee of Ofwat (where I worked between 1991-1995), we dealt exclusively with local and regional media for a very large area of the West Midlands, Oxfordshire, Wales, and some surrounding areas. At Dignity in Dying we had local stories linked to people who were campaigning and when we generated angles such as through the survey below. This brought us coverage across the country on radio and in print. The comment piece was for the Aberdeen Evening Express which I wrote under the name of my Chief Executive (Deborah Annetts) this was repeated in many other local newspapers. I have included two others: a front page local news story to me in the Wimbledon Guardian which I researched and gave to a local journalist, about exortionate fines for a badly positioned bus lane, and an example of placing sports coverage in a local paper, which is a highly competitive arena. This is always helped by providing a decent photograph as here for the Lichfield Mercury - even better if you can take the photos yourself!

People need different degrees of support for profiles, its a highly individual matter. Deborah Annetts I secured major profiles for in the Guardian (below, Exit Strategy) and the Metro newspaper (nearly one million circulation) and I drafted her answers to a Q&A profile in the Evening Standard.  At the NLC, I helped with profiles for three Chairmen, in the Business, the Daily Telegraph and the Financial Times. I also helped to profile staff for pieces, usually experts (see trade magazines category). I've been profiled myself too (see my personal profile) and I've written profiles of others (you can read these on my writing site, Writer's Block).

It's not easy to manage your own PR... ask Peter Mandelson! Nevertheless here is my own experience. My professional magazine is PR Week, and they have picked up on me 3 times. (1) A profile of me after a burst of high profile media for Dignity in Dying - its unusual for the PR to be profiled rather than his cause/organisation but this was a useful experience because it helps to understand the dynamics of a profile generally; (2) a news piece about my move from the National Lottery Commission to the Voluntary Euthanasia Society which we re-branded as Dignity in Dying and (3) a diary piece about my contribution to the renaming of Mike Oldfield's album "Light and Shade".  The forth piece is when I helped to play case study for recruitment consultants at VMA Group. No PR should aim to be a story in themselves outside of the narrow confines of their own professional environment unless they have a specific reason to do so.

Every business has a specialist publication - if not several- that cover its subject. Whether its broadcasting, construction, the environment (like water) or even the National Lottery, there is always somewhere that will pay special attention to your subject. Working with these papers is crucial because they are read by organisations chief stakeholders and critics, and for that reason, coverage in trade papers can be even more important than national newspaper coverage. Three examples here of dealing with them.

 

(a) The glossy front page feature is one we set up at the National Lottery Commission with Internal Auditor (& Business Risk) magazine to help promote the good work we were doing behind the scenes. A key rule of doing this is to have a credible, self-aware or at least well briefed expert. In this case a photogenic one, a good photograph always helps with placing the story higher in the order and drawing people to it.

(b) A comment piece on the UK's Lottery regulation in the US publication International Gaming and Wagering Business (IGWB) , a specialist gambling business magazine, allowed us to communicate important messages internationally to a specialist market.

(c) Water Bulletin's feature on leake was incoming media, and we used the opportunity to send a tough message to water companies that they would not get away with poor performance while at the same time defending our position's credibility. This required a lot of quick and tricky work on a technical and legal subject.

Here are three business stories. One is a story i offered exclusively to the Daily Telegraph because it hit our target market and limited the exposure of the piece which was what I was asked to do by the organisation I worked for. This piece got the message over that business was being freed from red tape by its regulator. The second piece in the Independent on Sunday (or Sinde) was prompted by my comment piece inside and shows how analaysis and comment pieces and news can be linked. The same thing can happen with profiles and sometimes features. Finally, the Birmingham Post piece shows how a national story can have regional angles and to combine the two leads to extensive exposure. Regional papers tend to have dedicated business and city correspondents, but smaller local papers generally do not.

Its important to establish relationships with key commentators whether they are national or specialist, and to meet and talk to them as they have the space and luxury of telling it their way - often even if they are not on song with their paper's editorial viewpoint. I've worked with many commentators, sometimes because they ring up and often because they are the result of a long process of keeping in touch, informing them and persuasion. Its not possible to persaude them against their views, but you can help to get useful accuracy and suggest valid angles.

I've had good results in many places, trade papers, specialist papers, and in numerous nationals. I could not tell you some of them for fear of upsetting the writers or their readers and editors. Here is an example of a comment piece by Camilla Cavendish of The Times who wrote this after many long phone conversations. Camilla's views were largely supportive of the organisation I worked for the important thing for me was ensuring she had good information and did not misunderstand anything. Similarly, Minette Marin (Sunday Times) and Polly Toynbee (Guardian) also wrote about the assisted dying issue and were good at researching and listening.

This was a piece I suggested to Brian and his new wife and set up for them with an appropriate magazine...her first interview. Part of the process of working with real people in delicate situations is supporting them and advising them and encouraging them. This worked out well for Carol Pretty and Brian, and also for the Magazine, Women's Weekly. The women's sector is crowded and takes some picking through to find the right subject and treatment with the right magazine and it helps to study it or else have a freelance who knows the market well. I've placed pieces in numerous women's magazines such as Psychologies, Take a Break, Reveal, Grazia, and others.