By Fraser P. Seitel

Some few public relations professionals make the bulk of their living as counselors – advising senior management on what to do, what to say, and how to say it.

The rest of us make our living as publicity pitch men or women – toiling in the vineyards of email pitch letters, follow up media calls, and cross-fingered press conferences.

Like everything else in the practice of PR, securing publicity for a client is an art, not a science.

Landing publicity takes strategic understanding of what the media want, impeccable timing to heighten the sense of "urgency" about the subject at hand, and, most important, elbow grease from the pitching practitioner.

The "downside," of course, is that most daily attempts at publicity – just glance over at the hundreds of releases that hit PR Newswire or Business Wire every day to see what you're up against – never see the light of print or broadcast. And there are few worse feelings for a PR professional than organizing a "news" conference where the dais members outnumber the reporters.

So there's a real art to converting your publicity to a journalist's "news."

Here's how the pros sell a story that not only makes it into print and on the air – but winds up as front page news.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the government agency that administers immigration policy, decided to introduce a website for immigrants.

That was the "news" - a new website, just like the thousands of others sponsored by the USG, not to mention the tens of millions of websites floating around in cyberspace.

Sound like front page material to you? Me neither.

Nor did it, frankly, to many of those involved with the real sponsor of the new website: the President's Task Force on New Americans, a hodgepodge of representatives from State, Treasury, Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Homeland Security, and other departments.

Oh sure, the purpose of the new website -"to help legal immigrants embrace the common core of American civic culture, learn our common language, and fully become Americans," was noble and valid.

But publicity potential? Dubious.

So USCIS turned the publicity-seeking responsibility for the publicity-challenged project over to Senior Media Relations Specialist Dan Kane, an experienced public relations hand and take-no-prisoners publicity bulldog.

USCIS veteran Kane shook off the doubters and set in place a multi-step, strategic publicity plan to put reportorial fannies in the seats at a June 12 press conference and drive the "big news" that would secure national media coverage.

• Step 1 - Offer up "hitters."

One way that reporters assess the significance of a publicity event (i.e. determine whether it's worth attending) is through the lineup of those presiding. In Washington, where press events are offered from morning till night, a news conference featuring mid-level bureaucrats won't attract flies.

So in the case of the proposed announcement by the President's Task Force on New Americans, the lead presenters at the news conference were to be the charismatic Director of USCIS, Emilio Gonzalez, assisted by the Treasurer of the United States, Anna Escobedo Cabral, along with the other mid-level, bureaucratic members of the task force.

The two lead dogs offered enough "juice" to stimulate preliminary interest.

• Step 2 - Offer bona fide "news."

Since the days of Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays, the publicity principle of PR has remained the same: provide journalists with material that is "newsworthy," i.e. capable of being used in the newspaper, or radio, TV, or, these days, on an Internet news site.

This simple principle is violated thousands of times every day by people who bill themselves as "PR professionals" but no little about what constitutes itself as "news." Alas.

In the case of the task force announcement, media relations specialist Kane promised in his pitch email advisory, "the announcement of three major programs and initiatives" to assist legal immigrants assimilate into American culture.

• Step 3 - Choose a sexy venue.

The more dramatic the venue for a news announcement, the more momentous the news appears to be. A venue that offers authenticity or action or, forgive me, "gravitas," is more likely to be considered important.

That's why rather than staging the task force announcement in the USCIS headquarters office, which demands no special press credentials, the June 12 news conference was scheduled at the Department of the Treasury, where special press credentials, authorized by the Secret Service, are required.

The more prominent venue thus added to the significance of the event.

• Step 4 - Emphasize topicality.

Timeliness and topicality are two time-tested tie-ins for generating publicity.

Today, with all the PR publicists scurrying about to land their clients in the media, having a news tie-in is almost obligatory to make the media cut.

Kane, understood that in immigration, he was dealing with the hottest news topic this side of the Iraq war, and he emphasized this in all contacts with journalists in pitching the upcoming news conference.

• Step 5 - Send follow-up email pitches with different slug lines.

Reporters receive hundreds of emails a day, most destined for the trash. They don't read things and overlook things and generally are lackadaisical about their scrutiny of incoming missives.

So you absolutely must follow up with subsequent email pitches, using a different message on the "Subject" line in each successive email.

This latter point is important, because if reporters see the same Subject line as they have in the past, then they'll trash the incoming without opening. That's bad. So to avoid that, public relations pitchers should modify, ever so slightly, the Subject line to reflect "update" or "new information" or "further guidance" or even better, critical new data about which the recipient should be aware.

Dan Kane led his third email pitch reminder, the day before the conference, with the all-cap, bold-faced Subject: "SECRET SERVICE REQUIREMENT FOR TASK FORCE ON NEW AMERICANS," in which he explained the Secret Service check-in procedures for those attending the next day's proceedings.

That flagged appropriate journalistic attention.

• Step 6 - Call. Call. Call.

Journalists are notorious no-shows and regularly disappoint PR people who expect them to attend the publicity festivities – and promise their boss as much.

So it is obligatory to call reporters, right until hours before the scheduled rendezvous, to make sure they'll be there.

Kane peppered his follow-up calls by providing additional, informational tidbits to those he reached – subject matter of English classes planned, dollars to be spent on training, etc. – without giving away the hard news.

And on the day of the event, the national media, foreign media, and local outlets were there in force. It was a packed press conference, the promised land to any publicist.

Even better, the next day's national press was replete with stories about the government's new objective to help assimilate immigrants. Typical was the headline and lead paragraph in the Washington Times:

Website Gives Tips to Become American

The Bush administration announced a new effort yesterday to try to help new immigrants and new U.S. citizens learn English and assimilate into American society, complete with work kits and a website to help new arrivals find English classes and study for the citizenship test.

Right there on page one.