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

[Notkin]

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.