Over the years I’ve been in the paper a few times for various reasons. Mostly good. However, something that I’ve learned is that you never really know how you’re going to be portrayed, what information you provide the writer will use or not use, or how the article will come across to the general public.
So, my advice is this. A newspaper is not your mouth-piece. You need to be actively communicating and refining your message on your own terms. How you do that — a blog, newsletter, Twitter, podcast — is up to you. But do not allow the media, who will slightly bend or twist any story to find an angle that makes it more interesting, to do that messaging for you.
I’m happy that Coalwork, our coworking space in Scranton, was recently featured by our local newspaper. It is nice to be noticed and hopefully someone who would have never heard about Coalwork otherwise will. But, expectedly, they took a specific angle that, while not harmful to us, tried to make the entire thing more “interesting” to their readers. That’s OK. I’m also happy they linked to our site and we’re able to continue talking and writing about what is going on on our own terms.