Rich DeMuro of KCAL news stopped by today to interview me about the videos I'm posting on Mixergy.com. So I turned the conversation around and interviewed him. I asked him how startups can get on the news. Here's what he told me.

It's teleVISION - When you pitch your startup to TV you need to find a way to make your story visual. Rich told me about a dating site that made itself more visual by hosting a dating party. A web page isn't very visual, but a party is.

He reads email - You can find many reporters' email addresses online. Email them directly. But remember that they get lots of email, so keep your message short. (Here's Rich's site, by the way.)

Hook it - Look for a current news story to link your startup with. For example, remember that big new story about a computer engineer who was accused of withholding access codes to San Francisco's network? A security company used it as a hook and pitched Rich a story on weak passwords.

After the interview was over, I asked Rich how I could become a better interviewer. I'm never sure where to look when I interview people. So Rich helped me out. The key, as you'll see in the video that I included with this post, is to go back and forth between looking at the camera and the person I'm talking to.

You can see some pictures here.