A much cheaper solution: send reporters or newsdesks article 'helpers'. Basically, provide a list of bullet points which can be trivially fleshed out into a human-interest article, chosen and ordered to produce the story you want.
If you have a synthetic diamond company or something (that's a fake example), you don't really need to bribe your way into the headlines. You can just provide a ready-made skeleton for an article about how lab diamonds are indistinguishable from natural diamonds, and spice it up with some stats about how they're a huge hit with millennials. You can even get your company into the story by providing a juicy quote, which will of course be sourced as "Joe Schmoe from LabDiamondsAreUs says..."
I've seen this operation happen from both ends, and it works eerily well. Harried writers are grateful for content that's easily converted into deadline-beating stories, and as long as the topic is relatively low-consequence they don't feel much need to cross-reference or seek dissenting voices.
I get these all the time from SV startup PR firms. "Story Idea: 5 innovative new uses for Docker/Containers/Mongo" etc. it's one of the fastest ways to ensure I never write about something.
So if a PR firm is working for Startup A and pitches a list that includes Startup A-E, then you wouldn't write about any of them? Or can you tell in advance who is paying the bill?
They way it goes is that the PR firm sends me a basically fully written story, and offers to get me on the phone with one of their marketing folks to get a quote.
Sometimes, it's just a press release, but with a bunch of prewritten social shares for me.
I guess, on reflection, the behavior that seems most frustrating is pitching it as a "Story Idea". I would prefer to have had "An offer to speak with CEO of XYZ". But, in fairness, as an analyst I have slightly different priorities that the average journalist. (not saying they're better priorities, just different)
If you have a synthetic diamond company or something (that's a fake example), you don't really need to bribe your way into the headlines. You can just provide a ready-made skeleton for an article about how lab diamonds are indistinguishable from natural diamonds, and spice it up with some stats about how they're a huge hit with millennials. You can even get your company into the story by providing a juicy quote, which will of course be sourced as "Joe Schmoe from LabDiamondsAreUs says..."
I've seen this operation happen from both ends, and it works eerily well. Harried writers are grateful for content that's easily converted into deadline-beating stories, and as long as the topic is relatively low-consequence they don't feel much need to cross-reference or seek dissenting voices.