Here’s a quiz: an unfavorable story about your business appears in a major metropolitan newspaper. You should:
A) Phone the writer, call him names and threaten to sue him.
B) Analyze the article, note any inaccuracies and seek corrections and possibly a follow-up article.
C) Do a better job articulating the positive aspects of your story to other writers so they don’t jump on the negative bandwagon.
D) Both B and C.
If you answered D, then you’re on the right track with your media relations. If you answered A, then you probably went to the Donald Trump School of PR.
Hopefully, the only Trump school you attended was his PR academy, and not Trump University, the subject of the unflattering story by David Lazarus of the Los Angeles Times. For his story, Lazarus went to one of Trump’s free seminars about investing in distressed real estate, only to find that it was really a sales pitch for a $1,495 real estate investment seminar (what a shock).
Trump “followed up” the story by calling Lazarus and threatening him, then submitting a vituperative Letter to the Editor, which the Times actually published.
If Trump was playing the “all press is good press” card, then he got what he wanted: attention. But if he actually thinks this is the right way to handle media relations, then I’VE got a seminar he should attend. :)
