Mike Whittaker of Auckland recently sold his noisy 25-year-old washing machine on Trade Me for over $5000 – and achieved instant fame.

He appeared on TV, enjoyed international media coverage and his Trade Me page received more than 800,000 views - and all because of Mr Whitaker’s ability to tell a good story.

Instead of writing “25-year-old Kelvinator washing machine, still washes clothes well but really noisy,” he reported that his whiteware rattled so violently that he saw a portal to another dimension open above it – with dinosaurs beyond.

Mr Whittaker couldn’t have foreseen the impact his flight of fancy would have, not to mention the financial benefits. But his experience does illustrate how a well-told story can capture the attention of the media.

Without the luxury of being able to spin a tall tale like the ‘Scary Washing Machine’ man, the journalist – and PR writer/account manager – has to ensure they present the genuine facts in as newsworthy a way as possible.
The key to that is “news sense” – that innate instinct for spotting a good story, finding the best angle and then writing and pitching it in ways that will attract a news editor’s interest.

News sense is one of the intangible but vital qualities that a PR writer or journalist brings to their work – together with a genuine interest in people.

Often a client might be unaware of the potential of their own story. But, no matter how ordinary something seems, once you start talking and dig a little deeper, there’s invariably a good angle to be found – and usually more than one.

For instance, I was recently writing press releases for the National Excavator Competition – an annual event to find the country’s top digger driver, organised by the New Zealand Contractors’ Federation. While interviewing the Auckland winner I found that that he had competed against his sister, a recent fashion graduate, in the regional final.

The ‘angles’ of sibling rivalry and fashion designer working as an excavator operator were sufficient to interest a TV reporter who, in interviewing the winner in person, found he also had a $20,000 collection of toy excavators. Angles galore.

The result was a good amount of entertaining TV and newspaper coverage with positive publicity for the contestants, their employers and the competition.

Like the song says, it ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it.