March 2025 They Call it Earned Media

After taking a few days off, I’m busy scheduling post-NRB media interviews by phone for clients who are delighted to arrange their schedules to fit these continuing opportunities. This focus on interview scheduling reminded me of a topic I’d like to touch on again, since working with the news media and doing interviews may be new to some of you.

Bottom line lesson on working with the news media: they don’t have to interview you, and they certainly don’t operate in a world where they arrange their schedule to fit yours.

Or most likely that’s how it is for you, if you are reading this.

Because unless you are a household name for good or bad reasons, or an important news informant the media folks need, think of it more like they are doing you a favor, not the other way around, when they are offering you an interview.

For one thing, they may have a live radio or podcast that only occurs on Saturday at 11 am EST, or on Tuesdays at 4 pm MT. So, you obviously need to fit into that.

Or, even for a taped interview, they may only have the radio studio once a month on a Thursday from 11 am – 1 pm CT during which time they record four or five 22-minute interviews. You can then understand how they are likely to schedule precisely, and you can also see the effect it might have if you are running 10 minutes late.

But other times, they are recording interviews on a more relaxed schedule and have more flexibility. And most professional Christian journalists are gracious people who might not be as blunt as I am being now.

They may make it seem like they are happy to fit into your schedule.

But that’s not really the right way to think about it if you are an author being offered an interview.

I believe this is a more appropriate view.

As I’ve said here before, if you are offered an interview, you are being honored to have caught the attention and interest of a media outlet. You need to be appreciative and work your hardest to make it easy for the media outlet to connect with you, which has the unstated, somewhat subtle additional message of making them want to be sure to air your interview, which, as a reminder, they really don’t have to do. We could speak more about how to behave during an interview to also make sure the interview is a success, but that’s a topic for a different day.

For right now, I want to offer my pretty direct course correction if you somehow have the idea that the media is lucky to get a chance to interview you.

And sometimes folks whose work typically puts them in the driver’s seat on deciding when someone can schedule with them have to adjust their thinking on this. That may be folks whose professions run on a tight calendar, with jobs ranging from a doctor or other medical professional to manicurist or hair stylist, or even a pastor or ministry leader. If you have a gatekeeper staffer who handles your calendar, you may need to share this idea with them as well.

It’s a topic that pops up periodically with authors about being interviewed by the largely traditional media with which Buoyancy PR primarily works. I’ve mentioned it before here, but it’s a topic worth repeating.

And it’s part of a concept called Earned Media.

Taking a 500-foot view, when one looks at the landscape of trying to get the world’s attention for a book, business or cause, there are various and increasing numbers of avenues for interacting with the world.

If you are an experienced marketer, much of the rest of what I’m about to say will be old news to you so feel free to skip this next bit.

Those of you who became adults before the world and media was digitally driven remember the days of newspapers that came printed on paper and television where we had just a few channels and some of those went off the air at midnight. And we also had plenty of well-loved and relied upon radio stations.

But even in those days, one could argue there were these three recognized categories of media: Paid, Earned, and Owned. In those days, Paid media meant advertising in newspapers, on radio and on TV (and other types like billboards and flyers); Owned media (although not a description my journalism and PR courses used, however) would have included company newsletters, annual reports and brochures (and we also included company bulletin boards, back in the dark ages of employee communication).

And then there was Earned media – that was when the news media decided to cover you at an event, write a story or review of your book or play, or interview you. You had “earned” their attention, so to speak. You didn’t pay for the resulting airtime or article space. This is where PR people came in, to try to shine a light on what a company or individual was doing that was newsworthy and get the media’s attention.

I’m introducing this Earned Media topic with that remembrance as reference for some of us older ones reading here.

Today in the all-digital world in which we live, media audiences are sliced and diced, but folks still talk about Paid, Earned and Owned Media.

Earned media today includes more than interviews and articles, as we also earn customer or reader reviews, plus social media mentions which is kind of like digital word of mouth.

But the independence of the news media deciding to do a story on you, your book, business or ministry gives their coverage an authority and authenticity, not entirely unlike the consumer product reviews upon which we all increasingly rely.

Plus, those media outlets often have tens of thousands of listeners or watchers, and one interview by them can really boost people’s awareness of you.

You can’t always tell it by how they act, either, in my experience. Some of the most humble have the largest audiences.  Stories for you may follow eventually, but in any case, building awareness of and relationships with these media outlets and journalists is a major part of what we at Buoyancy PR specialize in.

I think we’ll come back to talk more about the details on these categories again in future weeks, because some research I found from the Harvard Business Review is worth thinking about.

Plus, there are still impressions from NRB swirling in my brain that I suspect may eventually become useful topics in weeks ahead.