Trapped in the 'dead zone'?

How to land news coverage when you have nothing to pitch

How to land news coverage when you have nothing to pitch It's a common problem in the weeks around Labor Day, the weeks leading up to Christmas—and again in January. It's the dead zone—when your organization probably isn't releasing much in the way of real news. And if your company or client isn't launching new products or new initiatives, then you're in a dead zone, no matter what time of year it is. "It's like squeezing blood from a turnip,' says Deborah Radman, managing director of Stanton Communications in New York, about planning a pitch campaign around nonexistent news. So how do you get news coverage when you don't have anything to pitch? PR professionals offer up their strategies for generating news when there doesn't seem to be any.

Build no-news blocks into the calendar: You'll manage the dead zones better if you plan for them, says Peter Baron, principal of Carabiner Communications in Atlanta. "We build that into the plan to cover the times when there won't be hard news.' This way, you know the slow period is coming, and you can do some advance planning to keep the buzz going.

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