The perception that the public holds of a company has many names. Some scholars call it reputation or image (e.g. Preston 2004); marketing practitioners often call it a brand. New insightful literature calls it celebrity and speaks of celebrity firms (Rindova, Pollock & Hayward, 2006).

Call it what you may, everyone is essentially speaking of the same thing: “What does the rest of the world think about us” as an intangible asset.

While KM literature recognizes the importance of creating and upholding a positive perception amongst the public, one important aspect of this is often overlooked: the gatekeeper role of business journalists, and the means by which companies gain media attention. Essentially, how companies get their stories out there.

The aim of my presentation is to underscore the importance of business journalists’ daily decision making over which news items to cover. These decisions have longstanding consequences, and act as major driving forces influencing the relational capital of both companies who attain media coverage as those who are not considered newsworthy.

The presentation is based on a paper that includes theoretical insights on reputation, image, storytelling and Relational (or Social) Capital, but chiefly attempts to bring new insights to the topic by providing empirical research results.

The paper reports findings from a qualitative analysis of semi-structured, in-depth interviews conducted with 5 journalists from the Finnish business press, and includes a number of relevant quotes from the interviewees. The article concludes in suggestions on how companies could better manage their relationship with business journalists and, consequently, attain more control over the stories that journalists create for the larger public.