Unknown Speaker 0:00
If you've ever caught yourself glued to the telly watching A Current Affair Australia's most watched current affairs show, then you'll know my guest this week needs no introduction. Liz Pearl is a true newsroom legend. She spent almost half her life as a journalist and reporter, and now she's the host of ACA new behind the scenes podcast. This is Akka Liz absolutely lives for the chase, whether it's a heartwarming win for the underdog, a classic humans doing good story, or one of those jaw dropping exposes that gets the whole country talking, her passion is telling real stories about real Australians. And if you've ever dreamed of getting your business or story featured on the nation's most trusted news show, tune in because Lizzie is dishing up all the insider tips and tricks in today's episode, Liz somehow juggles chasing down rogue tradies, peppering bureaucrats with the tough questions and gently persuading everyone from local heroes to slightly eccentric collectors, to open up on camera and now through actors behind the scenes. Podcast, that's a she's pulling back the curtain on all those wild newsroom war stories, newsroom disasters and the moments that don't make the 7pm live broadcast. We chat about why good news stories matter even more than click bait, the magic of a pitch that's genuinely helpful, and how to build a real relationship with a journal so your emails actually get read. Liz also serves up gems on why journalists love a quirky story as much as an expose what everyone gets wrong about getting on Akka and how persistence and a little humility go a long way when you're aiming for airtime, whether you're dreaming of being profiled for all the right reasons, nosey about the madness of media or let's be real. Just love a juicy behind the scenes yarn. You're in for a treat. Let's get started. You
Unknown Speaker 2:04
Liz, hello and welcome to media magnet, the podcast for female founders and women owned businesses, startups and side hustlers who want to learn how to grow their business leveraging the media and free PR, I'm Liz Nabal, and I'm your host, personal publicist, PR, strategist and dedicated hype woman. My goal with this show is to give you a behind the scenes tour of how the media works, to break down the barriers between your business and the big mastheads, so you can see how easy it is to get featured simply by giving journalists what they want. At media magnet, you'll also get access to the top journals, editors, writers and PR people in your industry and beyond, sharing their secrets and expertise on the how, why, what and when of pitching and getting featured in the media consistently, I will share with you how to build your reputation as an industry expert so successfully, the media will be knocking down your door. When I first started in small business 12 years ago, I had no idea what I was getting into. I had spent 15 years as a television news reporter working at several major networks in Australia and then as a freelancer in the US and around the world. I spent years dividing my time between working long shifts on a news desk and traveling the world, chasing stories, it was unpredictable and exciting until it wasn't anymore. I decided I wanted a life where I was in charge of what happened next and where I was working to build my own empire, not someone else's. There was a lot I had to learn about running my own business, but getting media and great free PR was not one of them. I already knew what the media wanted. I knew the secret formula for what made news, and I knew how to leverage those media outlets to build my business, get more exposure and ultimately make more sales. I was featured in every major media outlet in the country, and I never spent a single cent on PR. I took that knowledge for granted until it dawned on me one day that I could teach what I knew to other businesses, let them in on the secret, and they too could build their brands with organic media and PR. Let me help you take your brand from Best Kept Secret to household name. This is media magnet, the podcast, and I'm pretty pumped to have you here.
Unknown Speaker 4:42
Hello. Liz, thank you for coming on the show. Thank you for having me an absolute pleasure. We've never had a current affair or a journalist or reporter or producer from a current affairs. It's an absolute pleasure. I know lots of people have been patiently waiting for this episode. Thanks for taking time out of a busy newsroom day to be with us. No, of course, we.
Unknown Speaker 5:00
Love talk. We love Akka, and we also love talking about Akka. So anything you want to know, or maybe not anything, but more than happy to delve into it absolutely. So we've had a lot of students inside the courses that I run, and clients that I've that I've worked with, who the Holy Grail for them is getting on ACA, not for the wrong reasons, obviously, but for all the right reasons. I know you do a lot of feel good stories as well. Can you firstly, tell us a little bit about ACA and the kinds of stories that the show covers, and then we'll dive into the podcast, because I'd love to know more about how that came about. Yeah, so current affairs actually been on our screens for more than 50 years. So as you can imagine, over those decades, the show has evolved and changed as to what directions we go in and what paths we choose to cover and the stories that we choose to put on air six nights a week. So in terms of, there is a real appetite for good news out there, and I think it's sort of paints a picture of where we are as a society. There is so much bad news, and there's so much stress, financial stress, and that kind of thing. And I think it creates this environment where people really want to feel good about themselves, they want to feel good about their community, they want to feel good about their country and the place that we live. And one way that we found that is really popular with viewers is good news stories, and that's someone in your community who has been volunteering for the last 30 years, or someone who's raised a lot of money for charity, or someone who's just a really interesting, great person who has a collection of something weird and wacky and wonderful in their homes. And the skill of our reporters, we're not just news reporters. We have a different set of skills in that we we love to bring out people's character, and it can be really difficult. It's a skill, but once you get it, and once you can show that character to our audience,
Unknown Speaker 6:54
it's just beautiful television, and it makes people at home who are sitting there watching it at seven o'clock every night, it makes them feel good. And examples of good news stories that someone might want to pitch to us is, yeah, the volunteer in their community who's been working at the Surf Life Saving club for the last 40 years. So I love trawling through the Australia Day honors and the Queen's Birthday honors. That's where I find some of those real golden nugget kind of stories people who are raising money for really obscure charities, the charities that don't get all of the government support and all of the public awareness, or just someone who's got an amazing skill that translates to television, because when people are pitching us stories, they always need to think about, what are we going to see? Yeah, it's fabulous to have something that they can describe to us, but that only will work for a newspaper. We need to be able to see it in action, and that's the rule for television, 101, it's what can we see? What's going to light up our screens? And once people start to think about that's when the pitch will fall into place, and that's when you'll get the interest of a reporter like me or one of my many colleagues sitting out here because we're hungry for stories? Yeah, absolutely. And this is the thing I think a lot of I guess, if you're the majority of this audience is women led businesses, entrepreneurs, founders. They assume that you guys are so busy and you've got enough on your plate, and they don't want to interrupt your day or harass you with story ideas. But I keep saying to them, if you've got a great story idea, it's you're helping a journalist do the job that they're there to do by helping provide an insight that perhaps they won't have unless you email them or reach out to them exactly 100% I would never. Don't worry about journals. If they're busy, they just won't write back. Don't worry, we are always hungry for stories. We've got six shows a week to fill that six half hour slots a week to fill. So we're hungry for pictures, and we love good stories. I love nothing more than going out for the day and shooting a great story with a wonderful organization or a bunch of volunteers or some little old ladies who are doing wonderful things for a local hospital. We we love doing it, so I would never feel that your birth, anyone's burdening us or bothering us. It's actually the opposite. We're very hungry for stories, and we're hungry for good news, and, yeah, we've got a lot of airtime to fill.
Unknown Speaker 9:15
People think half an hour's not that long, but in TV land, that is a long time. It is if I go out and shoot a story that perhaps goes for six or seven minutes that can take me two days. Yeah, it's the driving time. It's the setting up of the cameras that can take if we want to set up a beautiful interview piece that can take half an hour to an hour, just setting up lights and setting the cameras and setting up two cameras. So yeah, if a shoot is taking us two days just to fill six minutes of TV, then yeah, it's a lot of time when you think about six shows a night. And we do have reporters in all of the key cities, Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, and we travel as well.
Unknown Speaker 10:00
Well, so yeah, we can, pretty much, if it's a good story, we'll go anywhere for it. Yeah, it's exactly right. Journos love a good story. That's one of the beauties of that job. Is like meeting so many different people and so many different interesting characters. Tell me a little bit about the audience of ACA, because what I teach inside the courses in my business is about understanding who the audience is because there's some stories that will be the right fit for ACA and others that won't hit the mark at all, and that's got to do with the audience and the kinds of people that you're trying to reach, right? Yeah, so it's kind of a funny thing. If you look at just who's watching our television as in the show that's on Live at seven o'clock every night, it's an older, skewed audience, and it's more of a female audience, but because of our shows are now on YouTube and nine now, and we have clips on Instagram and Tiktok, it's actually very widespread. So I would say I don't even think you need to pitch to a certain demographic. A good story is a good story no matter who's watching it, but we do skew older, and we definitely skew older on Fridays and Saturday nights, because that's who's home.
Unknown Speaker 11:11
I mean, I'm home at seven o'clock. I
Unknown Speaker 11:16
love nothing more than being at home on a seven o'clock on a Saturday night. But yeah, given the modern way that people are accessing our show now, we actually have a big audience on YouTube, and they're younger, yeah, but that does affect which stories we put on which nights of the week. So we might put a story that we know the oldies will love. We might put that on a Saturday night, and that can be something. I think I had a story last Friday night on the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two, because we know that stories like that big anniversary stories will be a lot more popular with an older audience. But in saying that, yeah, our Instagram and our Tiktok is very popular, and they're the young people. Yeah, wow. That's so interesting. It's changed.
Unknown Speaker 12:00
So with someone's pitching you a story, let's say from a business point of view, because they're like an industry expert, or they're a source on the ground in what's happening in a certain industry, or something's happened to their business, or they're coming from that kind of point of view. But it's not necessarily an easy story to tell pictorially, because, obviously, pictures, because it's TV. Do you have any sort of tips and tricks on how people might tell those stories if, for example, they're an accountant, or it's a medical story, or it's not it's necessarily like an Instagram or book easy to tell story?
Unknown Speaker 12:34
Yeah, and they are the hard ones, and that's when you know someone who does PR is worth all their weight, because they've got all the tips and tricks.
Unknown Speaker 12:42
The easiest way, I guess, would be to find what we call a real human. So that would be a case study to, for example, if it's a medical story, someone who has undergone this certain treatment that you're talking about, or if we're, if we're trying to get people to get checked for a certain illness or a certain disease, and it's, it's someone who's been through that experience and lived through that experience, and can then speak as a normal human being to an audience of diverse people about what that's like. That's a really easy way of doing it. Finance stories are really but that's when it comes down to whether your expert is a good communicator. If they use language that people don't understand, it's not going to fly. They need to be able to speak to people that don't have that level of expertise that they do, and not dumb it down, but just make it digestible in a way that people can understand. And always just think about pictures, and it doesn't have to be literally the cat's sitting on the mat. So let's show a cat sitting on a mat. It's that's when creative thinking can really come about. And you know what? I've had companies who've come to me and said, Look, I've got this really great piece of research. It's so interesting. And this is why, can you think of a way that would make it television really interesting? And I'm and of course, I'm going to help, because I want to be able to be able to tell that story as well. If it's interesting, ask the ask a producer, ask it, to ask the journalist, because we do this every day, and if it's not going to work in terms of pictures, then there's always another way of trying to tell this story. Yeah, it just involves a conversation. And you might have an idea, I might have an idea, and then somehow we'll meet in the middle, and something that neither of us thought was going to work for TV can actually work for TV, and it can be as simple as or maybe it's just an interview. You know, maybe we don't need the pictures this time, because not all of the stories have to have. Ideally, they do have the pictures. But maybe this can just be a really interesting interview, and a really great communicator can sustain a really interesting interview for five or six minutes? Yeah, absolutely. And I've seen Ali do that, and you have a finance expert come into the studio and speak to camera, and I'm assuming that's instead of just having black go to air with someone's voice. Yes, that's because this is a story that doesn't have pictures. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 15:00
Yeah, and that maybe affects all Australians, like interest rates, or something like that. Yeah, yeah, interest rates, tax returns, superannuation, all of these topics are quite dry, but they're so essential we it's something we all need to be educated on, something we all need to know about. So when we do superannuation stories, they're very popular because it's something that is so important and affects so many people and affects everyone. Yeah, how important is that relationship with having a contact, let's say at ACA, like yourself, or because a lot of the time, again, I know you guys are time poor. You've got a daily deadline, I'm assuming, for the most part, I guess, and you've got a chief of staff who's filtering story ideas and those sorts of things. But do you have any tips or tricks for someone who's I want to get through to the right person who perhaps covers the superannuation stories or the dodgy business owner stories or those sorts of things? How can you do that? Yeah, the best it's it is difficult, and that's why having good contacts works both ways. Because not everyone can just call up a journalist at A Current Affair and have a half an hour conversation, but that's when perhaps you've given us a story in the past that's worked really well. It's not just going to be having the hotline to the newsroom or to A Current Affair. It's something that, if you've met someone out at a press conference or a function, just go and have a chat with them, ask for their number. And it's something that has to be built on. But I've had an I've got a number of contacts that I've met over the last couple of years, and it's give and take. They've given me some great stories, and in return, they'll call me and be like, I've got this great thing. How do you think we can make it happen? And I'm more than happy to more than happy to help, but it is something that needs to be worked on, fostered built there's always, you can always just pick up the phone and ask to speak to a specific journalist, someone that covers finance, and that's where watching the news and being familiar with the faces that who are on the news or who are on a current event, who cover those certain stories that are in your realm. Yeah, you can just send them an email or give them a phone call, yeah, and that's good advice and advice that I do give often to to to the founders or business owners that I work with, and they're like, I've emailed so and they're just not emailing me back. And I'm like, you've got to understand that person has that journalist doesn't know who you are from a bar. So they've got 500 unopened emails in their inbox, and they're on a five o'clock deadline, or a four o'clock deadline. Why would they email you back if you're helping them out and flicking them stories I don't know couple of times a month, even if it has nothing to do with you or doesn't service you in any way, being a really helpful little source of information, I feel like, is a great little in to create a relationship where they know that you're not crazy, you're a great nation, you're a normal person who's going to give them great story ideas, and maybe you've bought yourself a little bit more time when you do have a story to pitch, yeah, yeah. And I would say it's you're right in my inbox at the moment, there's probably 500 unread emails, and a lot of them are just pitches from PR companies who clearly have no idea what a current affair is. They've pitching stories that we would never cover, that are not interesting, that have no pictures, that have no nothing unique about them, and they're trying to sell a product and and that's where
Unknown Speaker 18:15
it gets frustrating, because then those emails that people have sent me with legitimate stories just get lost. But I do try and read all
Unknown Speaker 18:22
every single journalist I've had on this show. I think Adela biani. I don't know if you know her. She's from The Daily Telegraph. She had 28,000 unopened emails. It's time to shut the inbox down and start again, because that is very and people pitching some new protein powder. I'm sorry, but it's not going to get on a current affair. And I also work on the weekend today show. It's not going to not going to get on the weekend Today Show, it's just not going to happen. It's we're not a we're not a free advertising service. Totally
Unknown Speaker 18:50
you would know that if you've watched the show for a couple you watch the show, if you watch the show, and that's what's so important as well. If people do want to pitch story ideas, we are so keen for them. But just watch the show. Get a sense of what is being covered and what what doesn't get covered, because you'll be wasting your time, and you don't want to feel like, oh, this journalist isn't writing back. I wonder why the answer might be right there in front of you. Yeah, it's fascinating that PR people would be emailing you stuff that does not apply. Like, I would have thought that would be their specialty. And this is what I tell like, the women that I work with all the time, is there is an opportunity here. You don't need to pay a PR company do this, because you can often do a better job, because you're a good source of information. You're an industry expert. Watch the show a few times, you know, send the journalist a couple of helpful emails. Actually, that was going to be my next question. Any sort of tips on like subject line, because if you're looking through those 500 unopened emails, anything that might tickle you, you know what? I think I've got the urgent, urgent, urgent, that's not going to work. People have started using emojis. Now, that's just annoying. I don't know. I don't know. Just people just be real. Yeah, you can. I.
Unknown Speaker 20:00
Skip, you skim all your emails, and you can tell the real ones. You can like, I think I saw your email, didn't I? And
Unknown Speaker 20:07
that's so interesting, yeah, because I don't, I think a lot of people assume, because I worked in news a long time ago, that I these are all my contacts, but most of the people I've had on this show, I've never met before, or I don't, I don't have an existing relationship with so it's like a conversational just, I don't even know what the subject line was, but it was something I don't remember, but I I probably saw it the day after, because I was checking all the mails, and I was like, Oh, what's this one? And I read it. And so I think it's just more not trying to be not trying to be clever, not trying to spin, not trying to, like, sell a product and pretend it's a news item, because journalists are smart, like, we know, you read the first line, you're like, Oh, someone's selling something here. They've used AI, too, and they've used AI, and this doesn't make sense,
Unknown Speaker 20:55
yeah. And this is the that's a whole another podcast episode, really. But using AI when they don't really understand what you wanted in the first place is not helpful. Yes, let's talk a bit about your podcast, because ACA has recently launched their own podcast called that's ACA. Is that? Right? Yes, that's a car. I know everyone's calls it that's
Unknown Speaker 21:14
sorry. No, no, everyone has been. We need to do something with our branding, because everyone's calling it that's ACA. That's the answer to either. But in the industry, A Current Affair is referred to as Akka, so we call it that's Akka. It all started when you sit around with your mates and you think you are so funny, you're having the most hilarious conversation, and you say, gosh, we are so funny, we should have our own podcast.
Unknown Speaker 21:41
Anyway. Steve Marshall, who's my co host, him and I sit across from each other in the current affair office, and we would just have these hilarious conversations every afternoon about stories that we've shot over the years and how this happened and how that happened. And I said to him one day, I was like, We need our own podcast. We're so funny, so we pitched it, and the bosses were like, Absolutely, do it? Love it, so you pushed it to them, I thought, or it would have been management saying, we've got our content. No, it was all our idea. And it didn't even, we didn't even really need to convince anyone. As soon as we said it, they just were like, Absolutely, because part of the sell is, which is why management would like it is because then we click, we put links through to all the stories that we've spoken about, which are up on our YouTube, which then drive more traffic back to those stories. So that's why they're keen on it, also, because then it's a whole new area for content and a new way of telling a current affairs stories to a different audience. And we love doing it, because we love when I go to a barbecue or a family dinner or something, you get so many questions about how we do things, where we get our stories from, how we turn emails into a six minute TV piece of television. And so we love just swapping stories about crazy things that have happened on the road or how we did this, or how we got that shot. And yeah, so there's just hours and hours and hours of content makes so much sense. Because, again, I thought that perhaps it had been something that you had to do as part of this whole content era of every different platform. But it is clever because, and I'm I've recommended the pod, and the reason why I wanted you on this podcast is because it is an interesting way to learn about what happens behind the scenes in media, about what different terms mean, and you don't need to be it's not scientific that it's difficult to understand, and it's a conversational podcast so that anyone can tune in and understand the gist of what's Behind the scenes and what it is that you guys are looking for in terms of the stories that you want to share and the kinds of people that you profile and the way you tell stories is different to the actual news program that proceeds. So it is all a bit of a learning curve for anyone in my world who's learning about media and PR, but also a massive opportunity for you guys, obviously, to repurpose and tap into new audiences, and also for anyone who's featured on the show, unless you feature on it for all the wrong reasons, get featured again somewhere else, yes, yeah. And because, I think in this new era of television as well, people want to know how things happen. There's such an appetite for behind the scenes, and how did you find this person? How did you get that particular shot? Where did you get your stories from? Who writes your scripts for you? And people want to know, and we should be happy to tell them, because we're in people's living rooms six nights a week, and they see this slick, 30 minute show that's taken hours and hours to put together, and what we want to be able to do is take viewers on a secondary journey, if you like, and show them what went into putting this story to air, and show them part of the podcast that is just running uncut interviews, because an interview might go.
Unknown Speaker 25:00
An hour, and you might see five or six minutes of it just from time constraints that our show is. So we can put the whole interview on, or we can what I've been loving doing lately on the podcast is getting some of our journals on just to tell some of their old war stories from how they used to do TV back in the 80s and 90s. So we've had Simon boater on, who's been a crime reporter for the last 40 years. Yes, I'm fascinated in how they used to do things before all of this modern day technology, and some of the different ways they used to do stories back in the 80s and the 90s, and what A Current Affair used to be. Yeah, and there's such an appetite. People just want to know how their TV show,
Unknown Speaker 25:40
how it's all put together, who's working on it, you know? And we've just been loving delving into it and providing those answers. And we've done 10 episodes, we've recorded 10 episodes, and we've only just got started every time. So much to tell. Yeah, we come out of the studio and we're like, Oh, next week we're going to do this and that and yeah. So particularly a fascinating career, a job as a journalist, particularly in somewhere like ACA, back in the day when I worked as a journalist, sometimes I would think, and this was obviously before the days of like content, no one would believe me if they told, if I told them what I was doing right now, if you're in a helicopter covering a flood story, or you're interviewing Hugh Jackman on a red carpet or a plane crash, or it is a very, very unique job that I know there's gotta be that natural element of human interest in in that anyway, but what you're doing every day is very, very different to what most people do when they go to work,
Unknown Speaker 26:34
absolutely. And I think that's why I've been doing it for so long. I started as a journalist when I was 2124
Unknown Speaker 26:42
years ago,
Unknown Speaker 26:44
and I've, over the years, I've thought, Oh, should I go and do PR? Should I go and work for the government? And I just can't, because I love it so much. And I just love, I love meeting people. I love talking to people. I love ending up in weird situations. And I love the just the great unknown. I don't think I could go and work in an office, because also I'm just in an inappropriate person, and I say things and do things people, I'm exactly the same, and that's why I work for myself, because I think I wouldn't last 30 seconds in an office. This is so boring. Did we do this yesterday? Are we going to really sit here and have another meeting? So it is certainly not for the faint hearted. And it's also, I think even now, I only work well under pressure. Like the most extreme amount of pressure is where I do my best work. And I think that comes from working as a journalist, because on this timeline, every day, this deadline, and you also get sent out on stories where you're like, how am I going to do that? This director will say to you, go and get this person to speak, and that person hasn't spoken to anyone in 25 years. But you can't come back to the office without something. Yes, and that's the challenge. If no one's been able to do any a certain thing, I'm like, I'm going to be the one who
Unknown Speaker 27:56
does. Sometimes you fail, and sometimes this unexpectedly, the people who you were like they will never speak to us. There's no way. And you get to their house and open the door and give you a cup of tea and sit down and have big chat. So it's addictive. It's highly addictive. Professional, the right job, don't go and work
Unknown Speaker 28:17
for the back at nine the very next day.
Unknown Speaker 28:21
Yeah. So the podcast is obviously doing really well. You're covering a lot of behind the scenes, of some of, I guess, the greatest moments, and then what goes into how the news is made, how ackers made every day. Is that right? Is that the gist of, yeah, we've, we've covered a few themes. So the first podcast was all about the bounce. And people who aren't aware of the term the bounce that is, you will see it most nights on A Current Affair, when a crew and a journalist goes up to a person in the street and starts hammering them with questions, and quite often, that person has refused an interview, has doesn't want to speak about whatever it is they're being accused of, and we've got a victim or someone who's come to us saying, hey, this person's ripped me off this Many 1000s of dollars, they're not announcing my calls. And then we move in, and that's when we ask those hard questions. But there is an art to it, and it's something that takes a lot of planning. And so the first episode of the podcast is called The Art of the bounce. So it's all about delving into how that happens and why we do it, because some people like that is so rude. Why would you do that? And we can get a bit of a bad name for ourselves by doing it, but it's quite often the last resort, and lots of people accountable. Like I think your people are coming to you, and this is where I think of ACA is very Australian in that way, but I know there's some versions of it in other countries, but holding people to account when people have got nowhere else to turn to, which is pretty important work. Quite often, these people have been to a court. The courts let them off. They've not had to pay back money, or they've not had to right a wrong. And we're like the we're the only we're the last resort, we're the last line of defense. And quite often, all these people want is.
Unknown Speaker 30:00
For that person's face to be shown on the television and to warn others, hey, don't hire this bloke to do this job at your house, because this is what he did to me and our authorities. They might do their best, but quite often they're not getting people's money back, and sometimes all they want is an apology and a recognition of what they've done. So that's why there are so many bounces on A Current Affair. But a lot goes into making those happen and to put pulling them off for television. Sometimes it can take you a week to find a person and you know, then they might do the bolt. The episode we've recorded today is about when people run.
Unknown Speaker 30:42
Yeah, yes,
Unknown Speaker 30:43
and quite often they run, and they run a long way. I think my co host Steve Marshall tracked a guy for he ran for a K and a half, and they did it in seven minutes. And that's a pretty that's pretty fun when you're not prepared to be chasing someone for a K and a half. It's, it's, you're wearing a suit, and you've got a guy with a camera and a boom pole so that that's another episode that's coming up is when people run. And we've also looked into, we've got Ali Langdon on that podcast is out. So just delving into her career, she's, you know, been with us at A Current Affair for a couple of years, but prior to that, was on 60 minutes and the Today Show. So she's got so many stories of being on the road and those kinds of adventures. We had a good chat to Layla McKinnon. She's also been a very familiar face for A Current Affair viewers. She's been on a since the 90s. Wow, she looks like she's only 20, but she's not look like she's been hosting for that long.
Unknown Speaker 31:41
And as I said, Simon bone has been on an episode which is not out yet. And Marty King is one of our Melbourne journos. He's been a journo for 40 years, and, my goodness, he's got some stories to tell. So it's about the process of putting the show together. But what I also really wanted to do in this podcast is to show viewers who we are, just a bit more of an insight into our personalities and our experiences, so that, because we are in people's living rooms, it's quite an intimate relationship, but I want people to know more about who we are and what experiences we bring to each story. So that's why we've delved into who everyone is. Yeah, and we have done a lot on on good news, because we love a win. So how those wins come about? We had a story on recently where a dodgy tradie took some cash from a little old lady and just didn't do the work he said he was going to do. And another company then saw the story, and they wanted to get the work done. So they offered to do it for free for her. And we love those kinds of stories on A Current Affair as well. So we delve into how those stories come about. And you often get good results for people. I know you, you can't even promise that, but often there's people taken to court as a result of this episode, or someone pays up what they're owed, or you're holding people to account. Lots of good work done there. And again, like you just mentioned, there's lots of opportunities for business owners too, if they're watching the show, step in and say, I'd like to help as a way of, I guess, more organic way than selling their product, but as a way of giving back to the community, but also doing the right thing and helping to get a good result. For some of the people who've been profiled and taken advantage of, really. And you know what? They'll get their they'll get their company mentioned on air, because they're doing a good deed, and we don't have any problems in mentioning companies that do that, because anyone that's willing to stump up the cash and help a little old lady who's been ripped off, good on them. They're doing a great service to the community as well. Yeah, awesome. Okay, so just to wrap up, so the show itself, obviously, the that's a podcast, is a spin off of the show, and it's taking people behind the scenes, which is obviously something that lots of people are interested in, and helps them get to know you guys and know a little bit more about how the show works. But the show itself, you're looking for good news stories, easy to read, pictures with people who've understand what the show covers and the kinds of stories they're looking at, any sort of top tips before we go about how people might slide into your inbox with more success than previously,
Unknown Speaker 34:17
writing into inbox With more success,
Unknown Speaker 34:21
finding out with more success, I would just say, as with everything that people do, be upfront, be honest, and not that I think people are lying, but I just think, just be completely open with what you're trying to do, and you catch you'll catch more attention that way. And if it doesn't work if the journalist writes back and goes, Oh, look, thank you so much. Not this time. Don't take that as a no. Never just have another go or pick up the phone and speak and be like, What could I do to make this work? And I think that's my number one tip is just don't take no for an answer the first time i.
Unknown Speaker 35:00
Never take no for an answer. Neither do I. No one else should.
Unknown Speaker 35:04
And I think I would imagine, once you've worked with someone, once you've spoken to them on the phone, and you realize that they they can, you know, they're articulate and they can speak well, and you know they're good talent, or they've got good ideas, I would imagine you'd be more likely to work with them again once you've had one successful kind of outcome. Absolutely, it's and I know it's hard getting that first bite, yeah, but if you've got a good idea, it will cut through.
Unknown Speaker 35:28
It actually will. And I just be yourself and be truthful and be honest about what you what you want to do and what you want to achieve. And that's how we all that's how everything works better. Yeah, you gotta get your foot in the door. That's the hardest part. Now, are we going to share your personal email address. Or do you want to see like the cols news desk? Who should people contact if they've got a great news story, or they'd like, okay? [email protected]
Unknown Speaker 35:53
it is not my personal
Unknown Speaker 35:55
1000 emails later,
Unknown Speaker 35:59
but there are ways of finding me people, people slide into my DMs, people just pick up the phone and call sometimes we're all just sitting here and we're happy to take a phone call, but the [email protected]
Unknown Speaker 36:10
email is monitored by a producer around the clock, so you're actually more likely to get through on that channel than trying to message me. Okay, and I'll share that, that link, that hyperlink in the show, yes, thank you. Liz, it's been an absolute pleasure. Good luck with the podcast. Sounds like you guys are killing it and having lots of fun. Thank you for having me. I've loved chatting, and the time's just flown. I know I get carried away with these things.
Unknown Speaker 36:35
This episode of media magnet was brought to you by my signature group coaching program, the media masters Academy. The media masters Academy is a live, online, six week course taught by me and designed to teach you how to become your own publicist and give you exclusive access to pitch the country's top journalists and editors. Doors open just three times a year. Check it out at Liz nabal.com along with a ton of free resources to help you get started taking your business from Best Kept Secret to household name right now. If you love this episode of media magnet, please share it with your business buddies or on social media and tag me at at Liz underscore Nabal. And if there's a specific guest you want to hear from on the show, or a topic or question you want to know more about, please tell me, so I can make sure the show stays dedicated, especially for you. You.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
