I've always gotten more than my fair share of press.  I've been interviewed on radio and television countless times (and have the bad tapes to prove it), and numerous feature stories have been written about CareerLab and me.  (A feature story is what the publication writes about you; a byline article is what you write for publication.) 
When you appear in the media in any form, you receive a "third-party endorsement," meaning someone else—other than you—thinks highly of you. This is one way to establish yourself as an expert.

As you know, the media operates 24x7x365, and they are eager for good material. If you have a good idea, you can get it published or written about—or you can be interviewed on radio, TV, or podcast—even YouTube. Your task is simply to communicate your idea, explaining benefits to the media outlet and their audience.

A story must have an angle, meaning it has to have a hook—something interesting and timely.  If your state flooded last year, statistics about flooding may have no appeal.  But if a flood is on the way, the opposite it true.

A story should also be new—that's why they call it news.  Old discoveries, theories, proposals, and experiments are simply not interesting—they've been done before.  Therefore, try to package your ideas in the language of the moment.

This is the difficult part of appealing to the media.  Your story must have value to their audience—not necessarily your audience.  Every day, businesses hire PR firms to promote mundane products and services, and the business owners expect their new stainless steel nuts and bolts to appear on the cover of Time magazine or USA Today.

It's never going to happen—unless the stainless steel nuts and bolts are tied to something important to the public today.  If the new bolts are making hip-replacements 50% less painful, then the elderly residents of Sun City will want to hear about them.

If you keep your focus on BENEFITS to the reader, viewer, listener—and if you communicate those benefits clearly, you'll be surprised at how often you are featured.

As a footnote, thanking reporters, writers, editors, and photographers after they have featured you is mandatory.  It sets the stage for your being interviewed or featured again and again.  If a reporter likes you, he or she will come back to you repeatedly for quotes and story ideas.  What could be better?

Here is the text of an actual e-mail I received today.  This reporter has interviewed me for several newspapers.  She called last week for a quote about a story, but I missed her same-day deadline.  Nevertheless, we exchanged new contact information, and today she sent this inquiry:
"Hey. I've been thinking....
 
What if we were to work on a story about the workplace counseling/conflict resolution you are doing?  For a magazine like People, it would need to be national - so it's good your co. is international. We'd also need real-life customers willing to talk and be photo'd.  That's the hard part!
 
Just turn it over in your head and see if we can come up with something NEW and DIFFERENT to write about this topic.  I'll think, too!"
My job now is to come up with some interesting case studies to write about. And that's a good problem to have.