News wires are distribution services for news stories. The way they work is quite simple. You pay the Newswire and they send your story out to thousands and thousands of journalists. Some of them even guarantee a certain number of media. If newswire is sound too good to be true, it's because they are. Here's why.
News wires are sometimes good for getting your story onto Google News, which means it's more likely to be found online. However, the guaranteed coverage is usually on low value websites, where the Newswire has negotiated a syndication deal, where they get a feed on the site. These sites are not read by your target audience and they are not picked up by serious journalists. The reason newswise don't work is all about motivation. The Newswire charges 400 pounds per media release, which means it's motivated by quantity. The more media releases they can publish, the more money They make, so they take on anything and everything.
Journalists are annoyed by press releases about meaningless stories. They feel spammed by them so they tend to discredit the news wires and ignore their emails entirely. Now you've got a great understanding of how to get the media to run your story. But that's only half the battle won. The best PR people are those people who can take this story and distributed well beyond the traditional media. In the next lesson, you'll learn how they just