Skip to main content

Your CEO wants coverage. Your colleagues want coverage. Gosh knows, your clients frikkin yearn for it.

You, on the other hand, pray for it, since your fabulous backside is on the proverbial line.

Alas, scoring media coverage is no picnic.

Here are 19 reasons, the media doesn’t give a damn about you (and never covers you):

  1. You approach them at the wrong time(s), when they are scrambling to file their stories, publish their blog posts, etc.
  2. You don’t believe PR is a business function worth investing in
  3. Your pitches are mass, anonymous blasts
  4. Your contact info is not SUPER easy to find
  5. There is other, more newsworthy, news to cover
  6. You include no rich media in your email pitches
  7. You’ve never cultivated and maintained real relationships with media
  8. You pitch media on things they don’t cover
  9. You write like a first grader
  10. Your never follow up on pitches (media tell you that you don’t need to do this, they LIE!)
  11. The media’s resources are dwindling, and you’ve not built the right kinds of capacity for this new reality
  12. You don’t do social media. (Sorry, if you want media coverage in 2011, you probably need to be interacting with the right people on the social web)
  13. What you’re pitching is REALLY not that interesting
  14. Your pitches don’t explicitly spell out a news/audience interest angle
  15. You ask for coverage before helping and giving to specific media. (It’s gotta be the other way around)
  16. You pitch media via channels they hate
  17. Your email subject line reads like Dickens wrote it. Looooooong!
  18. You LOVE you some jargon
  19. Other media have covered you a whole bunch, and earlier

You must have other ideas. Add them below.

Join the discussion 2 Comments

  • Krista says:

    Wow, this is quite the impressive list! I honestly think you encapsulated most of what I’ve found to be true as to why media often don’t cover PR pitches.

    One item I might add is if you (or your client) has burned a reporter or an outlet previously (i.e. not following through with an interview; not cooperating at an interview; or just insulting them for not covering the pitch), it’s highly likely they won’t be so happy to hear from you in the future. Lesson is to always follow through and to not burn bridges in the media, because you never know when you’ll find that person again.

  • Excellent add! Sometimes media make me want to pull my hair out. It is never a good strategy though 🙂

Leave a Reply