Steve Rhodes, editor and publisher of the Beachwood Reporter, talked with CMW about what benefits nonprofit communicators and agencies could gain from pitching to smaller news outlets.

Pitch Steve by emailing him at srhodes@beachwoodreporter.com or calling him at 773-235-8986.

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by Mike Doyle

Pitching a story to a blogger on the Internet is a different animal than pitching to a print or broadcast reporter. Unlike the “traditional” media world, on the blogosphere you don’t get to leverage your verbal agility to establish a relationship with a reporter over the phone first, and then ask if they’d like to see your press release. And you certainly can’t spam World Wide Web bloggers with a single, impersonal press release that you’ve already emailed to the whole wide world.

While traditional media and the blogosphere both rely on the integrity of honestly forged personal relationships, on the blogosphere more than anywhere reputations are built around endorsements by others: specifically, vouching from supportive bloggers and positive comments submitted by a community of interested readers. If your blogger pitches hit the mark, a buzz of third-party vouching can develop, where bloggers and their readers begin to debate your message among each other, with little additional effort needed by you. When that happens, you can even start pointing print and broadcast reporters to the hubbub around your message on the Internet, if they haven’t found it already. Read the rest of this entry »