NBC5's Sims shares suggestions for making news

By Abigail Allen

Editor & Publisher

Vince Sims of NBC5 shared some insight into how small business owners can get their information out there.

Pitch information to local newspapers, contact reporters who work on a specific beat and find a way to provide helpful information were his suggestions.

“You think about, ‘How can I get my business on the news?’” he said, adding, “in a good way.”

The reporters, producers and managers cull through local papers, social media and submitted suggestions to form those ideas.

“You have to first of all make the connection to get to the news,” Sims said. “We’re not really that hard to reach. I always tell people, first of all, we have the local paper that’s here. You want to know how to reach them … to make that contact.”

He suggested finding the hook that will appeal to a media outlet and to keep the pitch direct and concise to increase the chance it will be acted upon.

He used a plumbing company offering suggestions for winterizing pipes as an example of a hook.

“We may not be able to use you then, but you’re going to go into our system, and we’ll be able to maybe use you down the line,” he said.

Sims, who has been part of the NBC5 team for five years, is the weekend co-anchor and a reporter.

“I’ve been in the industry 30 years,” he said. “… I love what I do because every day is something different. I become a daily expert on something, be it road construction or crime or politics. I just never know what my day is going to be until I go in that morning.”

Sims was the featured speaker at the PointBank Business Breakfast on Wednesday morning at PointBank President Ray David’s invitation.

“Your favorite blooper?” David asked.

Sims recalled an experience early in his career when the cardboard background fell while he was live on the air in Monroe, Louisiana.

“I was delivering the news, and I just kept a stone face,” he said, drawing chuckles from the crowd.

At the suggestion of his fellow NBC5 investigative reporter Eva Parks, Sims discussed isee@nbcdfw.com, “because we can’t always cover everything,” Parks said.

“If you send in some pictures and videos of an event or something that you have going on, that gives us the opportunity to air it on the news that way,” Sims said.