I would like a very comprehensive answer to the following question:

In attempting to run a media campaign for a recently launched social
networking site for which one wants to run a national conventional
media campaign, what are the best strategies for contacting potential
media outlets.  For example, if I wanted to get a story run on Good
Morning America, how would that be accomplished?    Second, I want a
list of exactly the high-level individuals i should contact to
accomplish this.  The story--by virtue of the underlying goodness of
the venture--will have very positive, feel-good undertones, the kind
of thing that Good Morning America or the Oprahs of the world would
love to talk about.  I would like a list of everybody from  top news
paper columnist, to radio personalities, to television shows that
would be apt to run such a story and the person's i should contact. 
This is a high-dollar question, so the people list should be very high
quality and should include at least 50 people who would be right to
contact (and that doesn't mean Oprah herself, but the high level
executive at the show who handles story processing and would be
amenable to assessing the story for its potential.  Thanks.

Quite honestly, although I am sure that I (or one of my colleagues)
can produce strategies and contacts, the easiest, surest and most
professional way to erach these people and these shows would be to use
a professional PR agency, which has experience in inserting human
interest stories to light news programs and talkshows.

I agree with the earlier comment that in many ways the best way to
accomplish what you seem to want to accomplish is to hire a
professional public relations agency to work on your behalf.

However, if you are looking to obtain a list of media contacts to whom
to pitch your stories, I note that there are plenty of professional
directories, periodically updated, that ought include helpful contact
information.  Among the most respected of these are the various
Bacon's Media Directories:
http://www.bacons.com/media-directories.asp

The retail price of just one of these media directories may be
prohibitively high for you (a single directory costs many times as
much as you're offering for this question, for example) but your local
library may have these (or similar) media directories available to
you, should you wind up wanting to do the research directly.


Obtaining the contact list is, of course, only one part of the
challenge; a good PR firm will almost surely have pre-existing
contacts and already be skilled at, say, writing press releases and
handling media contacts.