It’s not too late to Newsjack the “you can’t buy this handbag because you are black”, Oprah Winfrey, Swiss handbag story.
But you probably only have an hour or two to start, and if you are not geared up to launch something tasty then probably best not to launch anything at all.
I first saw this story on the BBC this morning,
I was surprised there was nothing on the US news outlets, but then realised that Oprah had revealed the story on a late night show, when most of the US media people are tucked up in bed. Which raises the interesting fact that the UK is in a very good position to take advantage of any news that comes out at that hour.
We had a good few hours of prime newsjacking planning before even the earliest US blogger pinged their RSS fee. Of course those staying up late could have caught it, but they didn’t.
CBS though got a good write up about it, even locating the store where the incident took place.
And I love the quote from the Swiss spokesperson for the store, We didn’t know it was Oprah…it was a misunderstanding…”We don’t have any facial recognition here.”
Which of course raises a number of issues regarding racism and particularly when you look at the current attitude to asylum seekers in Switzerland.
I have sent out a few ideas over the Newsjacking Alerts service and hopefully a few will see the light of day.
There are of course some great handbag stories out there to be curated, such as I was handbagged by Mrs Thatcher
It’s always better to newsjack something that you really believe in and which promotes a positive messages such as anti-racism. When you go after the positive narrative it does help carry the story along.