The Writing Life

October is a heck of a month.

There is a lot going on, but when I was a newspaper editor, one of the big things was planning our coverage of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Here's the issue.

The awareness of the month is so very important, and it is a cause worthy of significant coverage.

But from the point of view of an editor, it is difficult. And the reason is simple. Every cancer fighting organization, every hospital, every cancer center, and various other groups, organizations and businesses all send you information. It is the shock and awe of PR.

One year, I had the typical influx of press releases and information. One young man followed up and I explained to him that we had a local cancer survivor, a local hospital and some other local sources we were using for our local coverage. I told him I appreciated his information, but we were a local paper and would use local sources.

He got the hint.

About a month later I got a call from this guy. He had information. Local information. Important information that I did not know. Turns out, our county was number one in the state in cancer cases, and in preventable cancer deaths resulting from lack of early detection.

HOLY COW!

Now that's a story. Local information I did not have resulted in a fantastic series of stories, a series in which, among local sources, I used his client as a valuable resource - a client that we liberally quoted.

It was great. Because a PR professional was professional, listened to the editor's needs, used a little hustle the paper got a great story, the readers were given an critically important service, and the public relations firm had a very good hit for their client.