Knockout Rats and the media
December 29, 2008
I haven’t written much about the biotech start-up, Transposagen, I work with but a lot of news has come out recently regarding our first product, Knockout rats. The quick & Dirty on what KO rats are is that they are rats with single gene deletions that often will mimic human diseases. Rats are important because humans are more physiologically similar to rats than mice and up until now only KO mice were available. Transposagen has KO rats available for use in drug discovery research. What is interesting is that new advances using Rat stem cells has just been announced and received a lot of coverage. In most of these articles, the claim is made that KO rats will now be available for the first time due to the advances in rat stem cells. This is fundamentally inaccurate since Transposagen has been producing and
has these KO rats available. The point is that their is a lot of writers in media who are lazy and will just reprint a press release as if it was a news story and not fact check all the claims. In many cases, their are supposed news websites that just reprint these stories. More troubling is that in this case the articles are appearing in so called science publications. Had a reporter or editor researched the topic they would have provided a full accounting of the landscape. This has relevance to any start-up who is trying to garner press for their work. It is important to do more than just send out press releases. Three Tips:
1) Try and establish relationships with writers who cover technology in the area that you work. Start by not pitching them stories about your company but passing along information that may be of use to them. Be a source and be genuine.
2) Only send press releases for real news. Everything your company does is not news. Don’t spam out press releases. Send them regularly but with newsworthy content. A new product launch is news, your websites traffic is not unless you have hit a large milestone (e.g. 1 million pageviews)
3) Look for opportunities to speak and write. write a company blog, speak at conferences, write articles. The more you raise your profile and be seen as an expert in your area, the more your news will be taken seriously.
