When considering whether to write a story, a journalist always begins with two questions:

1. Whats new?
2. Who cares?

The first point is obvious. If something isnt new, then it cant be news. Most folks understand this instinctively.

It is the second point that most many people have trouble information. It isnt enough for your product to be new. To qualify as news, your story must appeal to a broad audience. It must have significance for other all the people, and lot of them.

For example, ruminate on the Taliban, the former rulers of Afghanistan.

Before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, few news media paid any attention whatsoever to the Taliban. After Sept. 11 and through the fall of the Afghan regime, the media couldnt get enough stories about the Taliban.

What changed to contruct this happen? It wasnt the Taliban. What changed were the medias attitudes toward the Taliban:

1. Whats new? Terrorists have attacked the United States and they are being harbored by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

2. Who cares? Virtually people.

Those two questions pushed the Taliban to the forefront of every mainstream newspaper, magazine, TV news program, radio news code and Web news page in the world.

This is an extreme example, but it makes the point.

If you want a story in the mainstream media, your story idea must appeal to a well-defined audience. If you want your story to appear in a trade magazine for nanotech engineers, then your story idea must appeal to nanotech engineers. If you want your story to appear in a suburban weekly, then your idea must appeal to the geographical, provincial interests of that weeklys subscribers.

The PR Rainmaker knows: If you want the news media to write about you or your company, you must clearly and concisely answer the questions Whats new? and Who cares?