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…
The “new tools” of marketing and PR are still “new” even though they’ve been in use for years now. Though best practices and rules of the game still appear far from certain, “new media” is now an established, entrenched industry, with all the hallmarks that come with this distinction. Books…
(Hat tip on this to Julien Smith) Lots of your time and mine is spent thinking about commerce and engaging in it. It was thus refreshing to read this NYT piece from a former US Marine named Maurice Decaul. Check it out – it is REALLY worth your time. Having returned…
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…
Writing is really hard. It is one of those things that lots of people claim to be good at but aren’t. Mechanics, style, flow and the inability to express thoughts succinctly are the usual suspects when it comes to crappy prose. Even if you are OK at putting words together,…
Parents agonize over where to send their kids to school. This is especially true if they are spending $10k plus on the price of admission to a private institution. Some private schools seem to get marketing, some don’t. While education is something most people are apt to spend money on,…
Since yesterday was so much fun I am back again with installment two of “Shoot that term in the head.” Today’s victim is “this is a critical time.” This unfortunate group of words is often employed by managers who are trying to impart a sense of urgency to their troops….
I ate at a ridiculously dope restaurant called Garde Manger last night. It was my second visit and the first for two of my companions. What struck me as I sampled quail and lobster risotto was that the place, while high end and priced as such, had no pretensions. The…
Justin Kownacki, who tends to deliver the goods, had an interesting post about inspiration (and why it is bullshit) the other day. I disagreed with elements of what he wrote, but looking back we were pissing around over semantics. In effect, we were talking about different meanings of the same word….