Manufacture the Story You Belong In
When you're too boring to cover directly, create the news, trend, or data others must cover — and live inside it.
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 3
- Confidence
- 88%
For hard-to-cover businesses (B2B, niche, wonky), direct feature coverage may be impossible. Feifer's alternative is to stop being the story and become part of a story: generate a survey, a data report, or surface a trend that journalists want to write about, so you get prominent billing as the source without the outlet having to feature you.
Origin
Jason Feifer, tracing the pattern from Barbara Corcoran's 'Corcoran Report' to modern survey-driven PR and Fred Ruckel's Ripple Rug arbitrage story.
Core principles
- 01Sometimes you are not the story, but you can be part of the story
- 02Create context in which you happen to live — news, a trend, or proprietary data
- 03The party who surfaces the trend or produces the data gets prominent billing
- 04Proprietary data you already own is the cheapest raw material for coverage
How to run it
- 1
Diagnose that you're hard to cover directly
Be honest: if you're a niche B2B service, a feature is unlikely. Switch strategy from 'get written about' to 'give journalists something to write about.'
Pro tip Adjacent routes include positioning yourself as a quotable expert on breaking news — a quote still earns an 'as featured in' credit.
- 2
Create the context — data, survey, or trend
Produce a piece of news: commission or compile a survey (top states/companies for X), publish a proprietary data report, or surface a real trend you're part of.
Pro tip Mine data you already have — Zapier's annual fastest-growing-apps list is just its own usage data compiled into a rankable top-10.
Watch out The context has to be genuinely interesting on its own; a self-serving non-story won't get picked up.
- 3
Position yourself as the source inside it
Pitch the trend/report to writers, offering yourself as the central example, data owner, or connector to others affected — earning prominent billing as the reason the story exists.
Pro tip Offer to introduce the reporter to others experiencing the same problem; being the connective source deepens your role in the piece.
Watch out Don't demand to be the whole story — accept being the authoritative part of a bigger piece.
In the wild
Feifer rejected Fred Ruckel's cat-toy sales pitch as not a fit. Ruckel replied offering to explain a 'gigantic scam' — Amazon-to-eBay arbitrage — where copycats resold his Ripple Rug on eBay, shipped from Amazon, causing customers to feel ripped off and return it. Feifer found it fascinating, asked Ruckel to connect him with other affected sellers, and reported a 3,000-4,000-word feature with Ruckel as the central character.
→ Ruckel got a major feature not by being the story but by being the way to understand a problem many small businesses faced.
Before she was famous, Barbara Corcoran was a random NYC realtor competing against giants. Her only window into the Manhattan market was her own clients' transactions, so she compiled that data into 'The Corcoran Report' and mailed it to the New York Times and Post. With no one else reporting on Manhattan market health, outlets covered the report as authoritative — branded with her name.
→ The report instantly positioned Corcoran as the market authority, a manufactured-news move Feifer says he still sees work constantly.
Common mistakes
Insisting on being the whole feature when you're not feature-worthy
Niche/B2B businesses that demand a full profile get rejected; the winning move is to become the authoritative part of a trend or data story instead.
Publishing self-serving 'news' with no genuine interest
A survey or report that only flatters you won't get picked up — the manufactured context must stand on its own as interesting to the outlet's audience.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders of hard-to-cover B2B, niche, or wonky businesses who own data or sit inside a trend
Not ideal for
Consumer products with an obvious, easily-featured story that can be pitched directly
From the transcript
“sometimes you are not the story but you can be part of the story”
“everyone started reporting on the corkran report as if it was an authoritative thing and it's produced by Barbara corkran which immediately put her in…”
“they're creating some context in which they just happen to live in hard to write about them this random company but you write about the…”
“zappier is a great great example I get a pitch from zappier every single year about the fastest growing business apps of the Year Based…”
From the episode
How to get press for your product
Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine)