There are many ways to involve a reporter in a story. One newspaper in Ohio where I worked printed a special section one year called "Trading Places." It was a compilation of stories written by reporters who worked at someone else's job for a day. A sports writer sold beer at a baseball game at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. The food writer worked as a chef in a hotel kitchen. A woman reporter worked as a matchmaker at a dating service. Another male reporter ended up with sore shoulders after heaving hundreds of garbage bags on his route as a municipal sanitation worker.

It was one of the most fun projects ever and resulted in some of the most creative writing I've ever seen from a reporting staff. If you want reporters to write about your company or organization, what better way to entice them than by letting them actually work at one of the more interesting jobs, then write about it.

For more entertaining ways to involve reporters in stories, see Special Report #42.