Have you ever asked yourself what makes something truly newsworthy? Honestly, ask yourself: what is the exact formula behind an irresistibly newsworthy story?
In the context of digital PR, creating a news story is like baking a delicious cake. When you want to see success, it’s important to be able to separate your Victoria Sponge from your Black Forest Gateau.
Honourable digital PR cake mentions*:
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The Jam Roley Poley: A great cake, often trendy in certain echo chambers, like workplace or parenting news.
- The Banoffee Pie: A bit niche, love the creativity, probably wouldn’t try it again.
- The Victoria Sponge: A safe bet, not memorable, not offensive; middle of the road.
- The Lemon Drizzle: Topical and perfectly acclimatised to societal interests, lending itself to widespread news interest with reliable insights.
*personal cake preferences, of course.
The cake analogy list could go on (and it will…). In this piece, I break down the golden ratio of a great, newsworthy digital PR story so you can hit the sweet spot with your next campaign. This is what we'll cover:
The Science Behind a Showstopping Digital PR Campaign (AKA the Lemon Drizzle Cake)
Before you brainstorm and piece together your next campaign, it is important to understand what constitutes newsworthiness. It’s the difference between a simply interesting story, a public interest piece, or the ingredients for a great digital PR campaign story.
What does newsworthy mean?
There are many reasons why stories end up in the news. Let’s dive into some of the key ones.
Public Interest
Any journalist will have had the concept of what is and isn’t in the ‘public interest’ drilled into them, but for those who didn't graduate in journalism, let us explain what counts as public interest news.
As of January 2026, Google's AI overview defines it as such: “In media law, the 'public interest' refers to matters affecting the community's welfare, governance, and the common good, justifying disclosure or reporting.”
They aren’t usually phenomenal news headlines, but are more categorised under current affairs. They’re stories the general public as a whole should, and have a right to know, because they may affect the community as a whole. A few things that are in the general public interest, but not inherently phenomenal in most cases:
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Elections
- Crime
- Current affairs
- Economics
Anything belonging to the public, such as public entities (public tax spending reports)
Things that can be argued as public interest (celebrity news, private companies and weather events).
You get the idea. For example: yes, we should know about the housing market returning to its pre-2023 levels, and there may be a jam-roley poley campaign that ties directly into this.
But is it a phenomenon? Usually not.
The housing market fluctuates constantly, and always will. While it affects the community and therefore falls under public interest, it’s rarely phenomenal because these changes are expected.
What’s interesting, but not phenomenal
These stories are not public interest; they’re ‘nice to know’, and are still interesting but not quite phenomenal.
Here, we have the Victoria Sponge, and many small, average' digital PR campaigns fall into this category.
These stories can’t be argued as public interest, as there is no obvious right for the public to know them. These stories are topics that may be transient or fleeting in levels of interest and could slip into the phenomenal bracket at any given time if the time is right.
For example:
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Lifestyle topics that are not currently trending (but have the potential to)
- Ongoing cult followings or interests that don’t get broad attention (stable = not phenomenal)
- A niche topic, without a spectacular headline, that’s only interesting to a smaller group of people (for example, a new crime book release or ‘Ten Ways to Remove Wine from a Carpet’).
These are mostly Victoria Sponges and Jam Roley Poley stories; if the news cycle lends itself, and a new phenomenal trend or narrative in the public eye takes off, these stories can be turned into a Lemon Drizzle story. But, without the winds of societal interest pushing you forward from your raspberry icing sails, they remain just that: A Victoria Sponge.
The Lemon Drizzle story: How it is made
A ‘Phenomena’ is: “An unusual or abnormal event, person or thing”.
News = phenomena.
At its core, news is simply something unusual or unexpected.
Phenomenal = News
When the StudioHawk team looks to create its next viral client campaign or opportunistic newsjack, we look for current societal phenomena that are gaining traction exponentially and see how we can tap into this niche and join the conversation. Journalists are opportunistic lemon drizzle cake eaters, and they will thank you for your efforts if you manage to pull one of these off.
To make a lemon drizzle cake, we must collect our stash of phenomonals:
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Newsjack
- Juicy data insight
- User-generated content or a case study
- Authority (not all spokespeople and companies are equal in public authority)
Newsjack
These are the undertows of the news: If the news is the boat, the phenomena are the unexpected societal undercurrents under the water’s surface that are about to push the news boat in a certain direction, and potentially abruptly.
How to spot a phenomenon:
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It can be a downright weird, unexplainable or unprecedented thing that will peak conversation for a few weeks, making countless headlines; public conversation around the topic ramps up.
- It's sudden, unlikely to happen again, a novelty, random, and most importantly, trending.
Juicy Data Insights
A good digital PR team will have data specialists on hand; most journalists don’t have data teams on hand. We can find out things that journalists don’t have the resources or time to uncover for themselves. This makes data scarce to a journalist, a finite resource to which we can access and offer them in return for coverage. To the journalist, this unique offering can hold up as phenomenal under the topic or media silo they write under.
Data insights aren’t always phenomenal; these can result in jam roley poleys, too, and that's okay. Echo chambers that read niche publications, like parenting, workplace or finance news, all love a jam roley poley.
However, if you can pair data insights that are unique and interesting with a newsjack or societal phenomenon that is currently taking flight, then you’ve got yourself the ingredients for a lemon drizzle!
User-Generated Content and Case Studies
This is where we interview real-life people with a story to tell and tie it into a news pitch. For example, a viral TikToker has an unusual hack, or someone has a story to tell about a freak weather event they survived, and they’re open to being interviewed. This is another type of phenomenon that we as digital PR’s can tap into.
People are busy, odd, and unique, and sometimes that formulates a newsworthy story!
I hate to be a broken record, but these are often jam roley poleys. BUT, if you tie this to a newsjack or societal phenomenon, then you’ve got yourself a lemon drizzle.
Expert Commentary and Natural Authority
This is when a brand that wants news coverage is already inherently newsworthy.
For example, there is a big difference between IKEA releasing their yearly data set of top DIY trends vs a small business owner of a boutique store around the corner sharing their predicted homeware trends.
The news results will look different. The weight of the name matters, and big names can be extremely compelling when pitching a story. But don’t be discouraged, smaller brands can also get great news recognition when done right. They just have to try a little harder and be a little more creative.
If you or your client has a lot of unique authority in a space, and they offer a comment on something societally happening right now, like a newsjack moment that is truly phenomenal, then it might just be a best baker in town moment!
Conclusion
The Lemon Drizzle has the same ingredients for the most part as a Victoria Sponge, a Jam Roly-Poly or even a Banoffee Pie. The only difference is: ‘phenomena’. That is the key ingredient to your Lemon Drizzle. Something compelling that everyone is talking about and has proven to make headlines already, which gives your digital PR cake a lift that the others don’t quite have.
If you’re interested in finding out more about StudioHawk’s best cakes (aka digital PR campaigns), you can check out our latest case studies to get the creative juice flowing.
Or if you need a helping hand in the kitchen to cook up a great digital PR campaign, you can get in touch with us here to learn more about how StudioHawk’s digital PR team can help you reach the right audience today.
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