One of the things that can get a bit tiresome at media events is journos with niche audiences who have to ask a question relevant to their audience and pretty much their audience alone.
Journos from channel mags, for example, always ask about channel strategy, a topic of little interest to 90% of the assembled media.
Business newspaper reporters always ask about money, often in considerable detail, again provoking rolled eyes from many other media in the crowd.
It’s sooooooooooo boring when this happens.
Yet as I prepared to ask a question of a visiting CEO last week, I realised that I have become one of those journos. Editing searchstorage.com.au means I must now ask boring niche questions no-one else cares about.
Sorry, my colleagues, it’s a dirty job covering storage, etc …
My PR readers now get to put something else in their briefing documents about me!
While this can be boring, I’ve found listening to specialist tech questions can be a rich source of story ideas. For example, say you work for a consumer title and detect, from a channel journalists’ questions, there’s a problem with warranties or a testy relationship with dealers – this can be worth following up.