Recently, I got a call from a food-related charity. The same call, it seems, I get from chefs every day.

The charity was frustrated with a recent article because it didn't tell even a portion of the story they needed told. And this was after years of sending the journalist scads and scads of information. The charity had spent time educating the journalist on their mission and value. They had done the job building the relationship.

And what they got back was a whole big pile of just this side of nothin'.

They were at a loss. So, they called me up because they wanted to know what chefs want to know every day -- Why isn't the media really telling the whole story they could tell about me?

Well, the answer is this: why the hell should they?

The media's job is to find news they think will interest their readers (and make their editor/boss happy), filter it through their perspective, and write it in a way that will inform, entertain or provoke. Their job is not to make story subjects happy.

In a small food community like Chicago, that concept sometimes butts up against the reality that we, all of us, know each other pretty darn well. And we're all pretty friendly, essentially becoming each other's friends over time, rather than just acquaintances. And friends, in the real world, take care of each other -- they get each other's backs.

But often, "journalist friendships" are another matter.  Journalists make great friends, I'll say that first. I have a few that I treasure greatly. So this isn't about whether journalists can be great friends, they are.

What it is about is all those people who are subjects (or not) of stories that journalists write about (or don't).

Because journalists make lots of contacts with sources for stories and, because of their job of needing to get the source to cough it all up, they need to make sure they conduct themselves in such a way that they become a trusted recipient of that subject's interesting news. So, by design, they are friendly.

They are also, on the whole, amazing listeners. They are such great listeners, in fact, that one can only assume that they start out life as great listeners.  Then, every day, they practice being even better listeners as part of their job. Resulting in listening skills that rival the best shrink. (For the record: that shrink isn't your friend either.)

In a world where it seems everyone is so busy that no one has time to listen, being around someone who actually does is intoxicating. It's hard not to think that they care, intensely, about you.

And I'll say this, on the whole, journalists are pretty awesome peeps, so likely, they do care about you. But this doesn't make them your friend. It simply makes them awesome.

But just because they are awesome people and good listeners and might even care about you, as a person, doesn't mean they are gonna print what you want them to print. Because if that is what they did, it would put them straight out of a job. And then, because you are their friend too, right?, you'd have to let them sleep on your couch.  Likely, you are their friend, but not that much of a friend.

In which case you can now begin to understand what I am talking about.

The Moral:
To befriend journalists, give them great compelling stories with a news hook and some sort of relevance to today's world and how about tossing in some sort of uniqueness that makes it interesting. Trust me, the journalists will end up writing what you want them to write if you do that kind of work. Then you can think they are your friend all you want.