Unless they are pursuing the big scoop -- some sort of scandal or major breaking news where exclusivity is at a premium, reporters do not want to have to work hard to get a story into the paper. That doesn't mean that they are lazy, only that they can't spend too much time chasing stories, otherwise that means that they risk not catching them and having to explain to their boss why they have nothing to show for their efforts.

When you look at animals in the wild, do predators waste a lot of energy chasing after prey if they don't think the odds are in favor of a good meal in return for their effort?

Believe me, having been there, there is nothing worse than having to tell your boss that you can't find enough stories that week. It's like a mobster on the Sopranos having to explain to Tony why his bag is light.

However, if that mobster sees an obvious opportunity, he'll jump all over it with, as Vince McMahon used to say, "ruthless aggression."

If you call a reporter and say "My BJJ school is the best, come down and check us out and I'm sure you'll agree," it may or may not be much of a story. That's a line for an advertisement, and reporters are often cynical enough that you will be lucky if they let you down easy with the equivalent of "It's not you, it's me."

You need to do some of their work for them. A story is "My BJJ school enabled one of my students to avoid a mugging last week. How about you come down, my student will talk to you about what happened, and we can show you how she defended herself. You'll have the opportunity to talk to the student, take pictures of her training, and hear a little about this local business."

THAT is a story.

Here's another story for those of you that are Brazilians here teaching Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, but if not, it's certainly adaptable to other styles and ethnicities. "I don't know if you're aware of this, but Brazilians are coming to this country in large numbers. I've done some research here, and it indicates that there are now XXXX number of Brazilians living in the U.S., versus XXXX 10 years ago. In fact, there are now XXXX Brazilians living in this town alone. Many of us came here to teach Brazilian jiu-jitsu. How about you come down, see the school, learn a little about the art, and if you like, I can put you in touch with a few other Brazilians teaching BJJ or doing other things in the U.S. or locally to help round out your story?"

That is a story. If you are the reporter in question, it is the equivalent of being a lion and walking into a valley filled with delicious animals that won't run away. You know that you will be able to eat for the next day or so.

There are many other hooks that you can give a reporter for your story. Another good one is about local students traveling to a tournament – the Mundials in Brazil, even something a few states away. Local papers like local stories.


One of the best examples of how to ensure that a reporter's visit turns into a story that I have seen in my career as a journalist is the strategy taken by Northrop Grumman, one of the largest defense contractors in the United States.

Northrop Grumman sends out a lot of press releases -- I sometimes get several different ones from them in a single day -- and by virtue of their size and importance to the market, some of them become a brief item in the paper that I write for. Their news releases range in importance from announcing that an executive received a promotion to the company winning a multi-billion dollar contract from the Pentagon. If you grow your business big enough, someday you can do the same – on the local level, it's the same as if a major business like Starbucks opens a new location or closes an existing one, etc.

But what is most effective about their strategy is the events they coordinate. Even when they didn't have something major to announce, like winning a new multi-billion dollar contract, roughly once a month and sometimes more often, they host an event at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., and invite lots of reporters to attend. They have their business people make a presentation about something that helps the military, and then have some of the military people in question there to talk about why they like it so much.

By doing this, Northrop Grumman has turned something that MIGHT make it into the news paper as a brief item into a feature story, complete with big pictures (that they of course provide) and the like. You may not realize this, but it can extremely difficult and time consuming to track down people in the military to talk for a story. By doing the events in this fashion, Northrop is essentially leading the lions into the valley filled with juicy animals.

You can do the same. Reports often don't like to base a story on a single source – in this case, you – so give them some students to talk to. Hopefully, they have a photographer who can come with them to shoot some pictures. But if not, offer to them up front that you (or one of your students) can take some digital pictures for them at high-resolution (newspapers tend to blow up pictures to a relatively large size, and often want hi-res images for this purpose) that you can email them. Pictures sometimes make the difference between a story getting into the paper and, well, not.

I'll be back in a couple of days with some more advice on how to make a reporters visit to your school turn into a great story.