On my first day on the job as a public relations director, I had a minor panic attack. I figured out that my main job was to convince media to run information about the university where I now worked, but no one told me how to do that, exactly.

Luckily the rush of adrenalin got me thinking about my time as a newspaper editor, when every day started in a panic: What would we fill tomorrow’s paper with? I realized that if I could provide ideas for stories and photos to the various media outlets, I would be doing them a favor and they would probably run some of the stuff I sent them.

It turns out that is exactly how it works. Many online news sites allow you to post information about upcoming events, celebrations and promotions. For traditional media – mainly daily newspapers, radio and television — these simple points will help you get your stories placed in the media.

Timing matters, and weekends are good times to schedule events because there are fewer things to cover on Saturday and Sunday.

Analyze the paper and look for all the openings. Many newspapers and nearly all online community news sites will run any photo you submit of people shaking hands, cuttings ribbons or selling baked goods to raise money for good causes. The goal is to post so many company photos that readers see more of your employees than they do of their own children.

If the paper has already covered your event once, don’t pitch it again. You might get one story-and-photo package of the antique car swap held to celebrate the opening of a new car dealership. But you won’t get another for the 1-year anniversary. Editors are vindictive. If they don’t like your idea, stop pitching it.

It is not good enough to send an email and hope for the best. Follow up with a phone call. At even small newsrooms, they get 1,000 emails a day. Good stories get lost by accident.

Don’t mention that you buy advertising in the publication that you are pitching a story to. You may, however, make that comment to the editor’s boss, the publisher, who cares about ad revenue.

Here’s how my office anticipated the local editor’s needs on a hot day in August. A heat wave had swept across the country over the previous few days and now was upon us. We knew the heat would be the big story in all the media. My university had agreed to cut the electricity to most of the buildings on campus within 30 minutes of getting a call from a power consortium. On the morning we thought the call might come, we asked the university building manager whether he would agree to let a reporter and photographer tail him as he shut off one building after another. He did. Then we called the newspaper and found an editor who was interested — because the story was different. Here was an angle that did not include sweating workers paving streets, kids running through sprinklers, or seniors waiting out the hot spell in the city shelter.

The shutdown notice came over university e-mail. We found out where the building manager was, called the newspaper and directed them toward him.

The next day, the top news story mentioned the university in the lead. Best of all, our building manager was featured in the main Page 1 photo, a dramatic shot of him barking orders into a walkie-talkie while behind him a staffer pulled the power switch in a building on campus.

It was perfect.

We don’t always have that kind of success, but in this case we put ourselves in position to succeed by making sure the newspaper had access to all the elements of a good story and photo: An unusual situation, with a cooperative person to quote, and a photo opportunity that did not involve a frolicking toddler.

And because we understand the way editors think, we started planning what story we would pitch next summer during the heat wave, because the local paper won’t put the same kind of story and photo on Page 1 again.