The truth about journalists
Journalists are sometimes forced to take the easy way out. They don't choose to, but often have little choice.
See, many local newsrooms are run on incredibly small budgets with tiny teams. That forces a lot of content to be generated in a short amount of time.
Your typical local newspaper in a small town may have just two journalists; yet they still have to write a whole newspaper between them. That's a lot of work. And these guys don't earn a fortune either... starting salaries can sometimes be as low as £8,000
That's not playing a sympathy card on their behalf. But if you understand the conditions some journalists have to work in, you can use that knowledge to get yourself free publicity really easily.
Journalists are forced to be lazy when their workload is high. If someone gives them a nice easy story on a plate, that is local, relevant to their target audience, and written in the newspaper's style... the chances of the story getting in the newspaper are way way higher.
You can do exactly the same with local radio stations and TV stations (the budgets might be bigger, but their resources are often limited too).
In fact, this is such an important point, it forms rule number 4 of the 5 Unbreakable Rules of Publicity.