You Must Be This Tall to Ride the Web

Information is power. That’s no mere clich . In just about any industry, the most powerful people have the information first. The Internet’s got the corner office now. For a lifetime, the New York Times, USA Today and their ilk were the publications to break big news. But in just a few years, the Web has forced us to change what we expect from even these gray ladies. The Times and USA Today are no longer the places to read it first; the Internet is. Sites like MSNBC.com, CNN.com, News.com, and others turned heads by reporting news moments after it happened.

Web news is as limber as it is fast. Hell-bent on speed and beating the big papers to the punch, Web news sites initially lacked the literary wordsmithing, multi-dimensional reporting, insight, and authoritative disposition of traditional papers. Since they trailed in institutional posturing, they made up for it (and still do) in personality. But Web media has outgrown most of its earlier teen tendencies and has gone mainstream. There isn’t a newspaper worth reading now that doesn’t have an online component to break news in some form or another. Even TV news programs have gone online to amplify past their time slots and cash in on the influence of the Web.

That said, it’s still true that a different set of standards governs what’s said and who says it on the Web. Online, everyone’s a columnist or a publisher. Digital articles are filled with commentary, opinion, inside jokes, jabs, and jibes. Like everyone else in the “new media revolution,” editors and reporters often pooh-pooh the rules of the traditional media, making anything game. The Web is a hot rumor mill, fanning sensational flames of gossip and whispering at water coolers all over.

Matt Drudge was once an unknown quantity on the beltway of American political news. As master of The Drudge Report, a mudslinging website among the button-down correspondents on The Hill, Drudge wasn’t considered worth talking to. Despite the initial naysaying, the Web gave Drudge freedom—the freedom to influence everyone.

Not connected to an editorial board or to the ethos of the Washington Post, Drudge was free to fraternize with insiders most reporters wouldn’t speak with and to make them sources. Drudge leveraged his murky Rolodex and digital autonomy to report news as rumors before it hit the front pages as facts. He built a powerful reputation and a super loyal readership. Now Matt Drudge is a real media player—hobnobbing with the insiders and playing a role in everyone’s media strategy. A titillating site made him one of a handful of media personalities that actually matter in a fickle town.

Whether or not you agree with Drudge’s philosophy on the news, he and online journalists like him have expanded the boundaries of what is considered newsworthy, bringing new levels of humor, irony, and personal observation to the news. And in terms of PR and buzz, the Web’s flexible boundaries offer plenty of opportunities to pitch more information personally.

Good PR people aren’t intimidated by the lack of rules on the Web. Instead, they turn it into an advantage. For example, since most Web editors are personas as well as journalists, they’re usually willing to write about themselves as much as they are the news. Therefore, by flipping through their archived articles, you can get a very clear sense of what Web reporters like or dislike. Some (ahem, most) of them have their own websites, too, which should give you some further biographical background.

Once you know what’s in their “yea” columns, pitch your product or service to them as people, not as journalists (flattery doesn’t hurt at this juncture, either). As you would do for a traditional print journalist, hook them by sending a sample of your product. If all goes according to plan, you’ll get a glowing review of not just the product, service, or whatever it is you’re hawking, you’ll also get a great story that explains how they used it: how it made their commute easier, how it got their floors shinier, or how it saved them from bankruptcy.

And it practically goes without saying that your product review will be published light years faster than it would be in print. Thanks to some simple circuitry, a journalist armed with a laptop and wireless modem can attend a press conference, write the story on the fly, e-mail it to her editor, and have it posted online before she even gets back to the office. Printing presses cannot compete with that. Therefore, many print newspapers depend on timely updates to their websites to narrow the speed gap between themselves and strictly online publications.

Use this to your advantage. If your news isn’t big enough in the eyes of the top daily papers, go to the Web and use that as your jumping-off spot. Set your sights high here, too. Plenty of national weekly magazines that you’ve come to know and trust have online components that act as daily news centers. Forbes.com, for instance, files new stories twice a day. While traditional print reporters have a story due once every week or two, our pals on the digital side are scrambling for news all day, every day, making it much easier for you to get noticed. For the reporter, it’s a found story. For you … well, among other things, you can finally say at parties: “as I said in Forbes …” in gleeful earnest.