There’s a million and one blog posts from flaks and journos on how to pitch. Maybe they’re worth your time. The “how to” guides of pitching sound the same most of the time though. People tell you that you’re supposed to research the reporter, usually lead with an email, make…
I hire lots of people who are fresh out of school for my PR team. Below are the job specific things that I look for in new hires. A sense of what news is: PR pros are not yet glorified community managers. We still ‘do’ news and pitching. The latter requires…
Mr. X writes five to six times a week on dead wood parchment. Over 320 000 people read his paper on weekdays and over 415 000 on weekends. He has been writing for over 30 years and has won numerous awards for his outstanding reporting and commentary. They read X’s…
If you, like me, follow mainstream media outlets on Twitter then you LOVE how they clog up your stream by broadcasting their own content. While a number of organizations have figured out great uses for Twitter, big media remains seemingly clueless. The content outlets broadcast via tweets does not seem…
Last week somebody asked me about whether they should invest money in putting a press release out via a newswire service. Newswires are REALLY expensive and the lovely folks who run them make you pay for distribution by the word. This is a pretty archaic way of doing things (and…
PR is a business in crisis. There are a variety of reasons for this but the Three S’s are largely responsible. These are spin, spamming and story pitches with no news value. As Brian Solis has eloquently stated, “PR does not stand for press release”. I agree with his contention…
Journalism is a day in day out grind and has the added problem of trying to combine exalted purpose (think about the public service performed by exposing Tiger Woods or Balloon Boy and blanket covering OJ) with the harsh reality of needing to act like a business. Tough stuff. Mother…