[meteorite-list] Re: Brenham Follow-on Effect

From: Sterling K. Webb <kelly_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri Nov 18 18:02:03 2005
Message-ID: <437E5D48.ED8D33FE_at_bhil.com>

Notkin wrote:

> Well, thanks for making us feel good about all our hard work. Always
> nice to receive feedback from an expert.

Geoff,

    Please don't get twitchy. You're reading
email insult where none was intended. Relax!
You did a marvelous job.

    The element of luck operates in the negative
sense in these matters. Despite the best job
of promotion in the world, if, say, some
terrorists had blown up a major US anything
and managed to kill a good number doing it,
or any of many potential big-story events had
happened, your worthy story (and lots of
others) would have vanished in the smoke.

    I meant no disrespect nor did I mean to
belittle your fine efforts nor frankly do I think
I said anything much to even imply it. If there
was any criticism at all in anything I wrote, it was
for media's taste for the "if-it-bleeds-it-leads"
story opportunity.

    If anything, you should read my comments
as praise for accomplishing an up-hill task
so well.


Sterling K. Webb
-----------------------------------------------
Sterling posted:

>
> > I think the most obvious reason for the lack of press "focus" on
> > Park Forest (March 26/27, 2003) is the fact that the invasion of Iraq,
> > or Gulf War II, commenced on March 20, 2003 and was, at the time of
> > Park Forest
>
> Good point. I didn't recall that both events happened at roughly the
> same time.
>
> > As for the character of the news story, the media is far more
> > interested in "Act of God" events than human accomplishments,
> > especially scientific ones.
>
> On a national level perhaps. I was referring to state-wide news and did
> not clarify that. Local TV and newspapers in Kansas were MUCH more
> interested in Steve's Brenham story than any world events. This clearly
> illustrated by the fact that Steve was the lead story on the evening
> news the same day that we put out the press release and carried the
> front page of the Saturday "Wichita Eagle." We chose to break the story
> with local media first, generate local interest, and then get the story
> to the AP so it would go national. That's exactly what happened.
>
> > And no amount of press releases and promotion would
> > make finding a new main mass of Brenham a news story if it
> > were competing against, say, the D-Day landing or a major
> > act of terrorism or a good-sized hurricane.
>
> Had we been competing against D-Day any fool can see we wouldn't have
> been on the front page, but Brenham is still a news-worthy story, and
> still would have received coverage. Science sections need science
> stories whether or not there is a war on.
>
> > But getting there is mostly a matter of luck.
>
> Well, thanks for making us feel good about all our hard work. Always
> nice to receive feedback from an expert.
>
> A great story will get out into the media if it's properly promoted,
> and Steve and Phil's discovery is a great story. We certainly had luck
> on our side in that we were not competing against any major news
> events, but we also generated the initial stories ourselves and were
> able to track them very clearly, as different press releases went to
> different media outlets at different times. FYI it was a personal
> friend of mine who put "The Wichita Eagle" journalist in touch with me
> (that was networking, not luck). She gave Steve the cover story. We
> also sent press releases to specific people in Kansas TV. One of them
> called me less than five minutes after receiving the release, and
> scheduled an interview for that very evening. The cover story, combined
> with the TV piece, had a high enough profile to get picked up by the
> AP.
>
> That was promotion, not "luck."
>
> Geoff N.
Received on Fri 18 Nov 2005 06:01:28 PM PST