Media relations in hard times

Rob Pegoraro has heard about a disturbing trend:

I learned a few things, none more disturbing than this: That some journalists--mostly tech freelancers, I was told--now regularly ask publicists to tweet out links to their work, noting that they get paid by how much traffic their stories generate.

Not a proud moment for the reporter, but as Pegoraro suggests, perfectly predictable. For the record, no one has asked me to do this.

A healthy news industry is in the interest of flacks. Therefore, we would be well advised to promote links to reporters in our respective fields whether or not they have written favorably about our clients. At a time when more and more positions are being cut, it is in our interest to demonstrate the news value of our practice area by driving up traffic to those stories.

And let us be realistic, reporters and editors are human. They are far more likely to open the email from someone who consistently promotes their work.

However, the practice of paying reporters based on page views is a poisonous one. It is not simply that the skills of reporting a story are different from the skills of promotion. It is only a question of time before some PR firm writes a bot that will artificially boost page views. It would work like a slow motion denial of service attack, boosting pages views without crashing the server. Measuring reporters by page views is simply asking for trouble.

Media relations for technology companies

First of all social media is a subset of media. Certainly special considerations apply to social media, but it should be treated as an aspect to your overall media relations effort.

Start by identifying the reporters who cover your field. While it may sound counter intuitive, you should define your business as narrowly as possibly, at least for internal purposes. Your chances of placing a story will be greatly enhanced by sending it to the reporters who cover that precise beat.

Get familiar with the reporters before you send them a pitch. If you don't have time to do that and run your business, hire a professional. Getting familiar with reporters is easier than ever. Almost all technology reporters are on Twitter, follow them. Even if you are not inclined to Twitter, you should have an account for listening purposes.

If you are a small company, your chances of placing a story are more difficult that ever, With publishers cutting positions, the competition for remaining space is tougher than ever. On the other hand, you can just use a press release service to put your story out and at least it will be on the web to be picked up by search engines. You should also put it on your website, in html. For small news announcements, a blog post should suffice.

Blog posts should occur regularly, not necessarily often, but predictably. Refreshing content gives people a reason to return to your site. Again, if you don't have time to blog regularly, hire a professional.

Now the big question, to Facebook or not to Facebook, that is the question. At this time I would say not if you don't want to. For software companies Facebook is still optional. If you are selling directly to consumers, I encourage you to set up a Facebook page and regularly update its content. If you don't have time, or are not inclined, hire a professional.

A professional looking press release is not the same as an effective press release

If you want to write a press release that actually gets placed with a news organization, don't model your news release on other news releases, model it on the style of the news organizaton you want ot place it with. If you want to place your story in the Washington Post, write like the stories you see in the Washington Post.

If you go to a trade show you will see hundreds of press releases, and they all read the same. It is truly a pity, because most of them have interesting stories to tell.

Too many press releases are written to be professional looking rather than newsworthy. If you put the phrase "leading provider of" in the first paragraph, you need to rewrite your release. Describe your company in the simplest way possible, say you are a content management company, or financial software company, or SaaS provider, or something the reader can easily understand.

Put your news in the headline or at least the first paragraph. It is astonishing how often this obvious technique is overlooked.

Here is an easy test to find out whether your news release is effective, give to a friend or family member and ask if they understand it. If they don't, it needs to be rewritten. Even the most technical stories can be communicated to a lay audience.

No one will struggle to understand what your product or service does. No one will struggle to understand why it is newsworthy.

Why PR workers keep doing those annoying things

Roy Greenslade writes about PR tactics that are annoying and counterproductive. Why do we keep doing these things?

And then there are emails telling me that X is flying into London - someone I've never heard of from a company I've never heard of - and offering me an exclusive opportunity to interview him or her. Does this ever work?

I have done this, and yes, it does work occasionally. Even though you may never have heard of my client, your readers would be interested. This is because my client has a product or service that your readers are interested in, even though they have not heard of my client. I know this because I have read enough of your work to be conversant with the interests of your audience. This is precisely the process that transforms nobodies into somebodies and, frankly, why I was hired.

I still make telephone calls, because I rarely place a story without telephone work. The day I can place a story without a telephone call is the day I stop making calls. Email is far more time efficient.

As for the rest of it, offering an exclusive when it isn't really an exclusive is appalling PR malpractice, and I am very sorry to hear that people are doing this. When I offer exclusives, I usually put a time limit on it, as in, "This is an exclusive, let me know by close of business by tomorrow if you want it." Obviously if a reporter is not interested in the story I will start sending it around. As for jargon and buzzwords, we all struggle with them, which is why IABC created this very amusing video:

Pitching an op-ed to the New York Times

Of all the hoopla about Greg Smith's new book I confess that the process of pitching an op ed to the New York Times was what caught my eye:

Smith decided to submit his piece to the op-ed page of The New York Times — the publication he thought “would have the most impact.”

When submitting his piece to oped@nytimes.com resulted in no response, Smith tried again — this time directly writing to a handful of editors. By the next morning, Smith had gotten the green light.

So the New York Times gets the editorial equivalent of a bolt of lightening and no one recognizes it until he sends it to specific people. This is my experience in media relations. If you follows the procedures laid out by news organizations you, and your client will get ignored. In order to catch their attention you have to send your material to a specific person.

Cheap shot dot com

The Guardian

A new website promises to shine a spotlight on "churnalism" by exposing the extent to which news articles have been directly copied from press releases.

The website, churnalism.com, created by charity the Media Standards Trust, allows readers to paste press releases into a "churn engine". It then compares the text with a constantly updated database of more than 3m articles. The results, which give articles a "churn rating", show the percentage of any given article that has been reproduced from publicity material.

First of all, congrats to the PR team at Churnalism for such a great story placement.

There is nothing wrong with using a press release in a news article. The test should be the information in the press release news; that is, is the material accurate, new, interesting, relevant, and compelling. If so an editor should use it; it not an editor should discard it.

UPDATE: Shel Holtz said this so much better.

Dan Snyder's image problem

Dan Snyder, owner of the Washington Football team, has a very serious image problem. By a series of ill advised actions, Snyder has cast himself in the role of the rich bully.

Most recently, in response to this farcical article in the Washington City Paper, he threatened to sue the paper, calculating that the cost of litigation would force the paper to fire the reporter. It has backfired on him in a big way.

To their everlasting credit, the owners of the Washington City Paper, Atalaya Capital Management, has refused to back down. Public opinion is overwhelmingly on the side of the paper and a legal defense fund has been established.

As Bob Somerby teaches us, reporters develop narratives and follow scripts. Even before this latest blunder, Dan Snyder had cast himself in the role of the sports owner bully that everyone loves to hate. His suit does not appear to have merit and pressing it will have a devastating impact on his reputation and the franchise. If there is one thing the news media hates, it is the misuse of libel law to force a publication to fire a reporter. Dan Snyder is now in a no win situation.

It does not have to be this way. Dan Snyder does not have to be the bad guy. But in order to turn this around he needs to take dramatic action to change the narrative that has been developed around him.

In my opinion he needs to drop the lawsuit. That will not change his image, but it will end the current controversy. Beyond that, he needs to make a series of dramatic gestures to indicate that he has heard the publics's concerns and is taking them to heart.

First of all he needs to change the team's name. That would be the sort of big gesture that changes the narrative overnight and would force both the news media and general public to take another look at him. Next he needs to look at his present charitable contributions and look at ways he can communicate his commitment to his favorite causes. In addition to his present contributions, he could participate in any of the many walks for cure for breast cancer, or any other cause dear to his heart. This would show a personal commitment over an above the ability to write a big check.

Most of all someone close to him needs to explain you don't need to win every battle, just the big ones. Or, as the Rolling Stones once put it, "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need."

Online press room FAIL

I received an email from World Wide Conventions and Business Forums, so I decided to check out their web site. Check out their press room. You have to fill out a form with your name, business, complete contact information, and so on before you can even glance at their press releases. What reporter is going to bother? There are so many other companies to write about. Why create that barrier?

This company is not ready for basic media relations, never mind social media.

Jody Powell, 1943-2009

Powell Tate

Jody Powell is one of the reasons I went into PR. I was part of the Carter campaign in 1976, going back to when it was Jimmy Who. I never met Powell personally, but everyone in the campaign got to know him through the stream of memos that went out to campaign staff and volunteers. He was quick to alert volunteers to negative press articles that were about to come out. It is easier to maintain morale if you know what is coming.

Powell's book, The Other Side of the Story, is one of the most illuminating on media relations. This book was the first warning I had about the how the abuse of anonymous sources was corrupting our media and political culture.

One of the giants of our industry has fallen. He will be missed.

The New York Times obituary can be found here.

Edit -
Powell Tate has created a page for tributes.
Capitol Communicator's obituary.

Edit ii
Associated Press

Dale Leibach, a longtime friend and business associate since their days in the Carter White House, said the ex-president went to a nursing home where Powell's mother lives to tell her of her son's death before she heard it on the news.

It is so indicative of Carter that he went personally to tell Powell's mom of the death of her son.

Edit iii
MikeMartinez's tribute.

The difference between relationships and cronyism

The general public is interested in news. Reporters are interested in reporting interesting and compelling stories that will keep the public coming back for more. PR pros want to bring their client’s message before the public. Good media relations happen at the intersection of these three groups. The most important group here is the one which is silent, the general public. The key to building strong relationships with reporters and editors is to always keep in mind the interests of their readers.

When you send a useful news tip to a reporter, even if it does not advance the interest of a client, then you are also advancing the interests of the general public. When you help a reporter get credentials to a hot conference, then you are also advancing the interests of their readers. When you submit an item to Digg or Slashdot, then you are bringing that reporter’s work to the notice of a wider audience and therefor advancing the interests of the general public. It is not necessary to have 100% altruistic motives, building relationships is about open, honest mutual interest.

Cronyism happens when the public interest is forgotten. Cronyism happens when you become buddies with a reporter and they write about your clients because you are all members of the “cool kids club.” If you socialize with reporters, outside of industry events, if you all go to the same parties, are members of the same health club, and generally hang out together like you never got past high school, then you are promoting crony journalism. At some point the general public will catch on to what is going on and will be profoundly offended. The general public regards such arrangements as corrupt. Then what? You still have your relationship, but now story placement does not have anything like its previous value. Our whole professions is predicated upon the existence of an independent and credible press, and we must build relationships in a way the preserves and strengthens the institution of a free and independent press.

Nominate your customer

Federal Computer Week has put out a call for nominations for their Rising Star awards. This is a great chance for federal contractors to make their customer look good. Nominate your customer!

Scoble’s troubling anti-PR rant

Last Thursday’s edition of For Immediate Release contained a very troubling rant by Robert Scoble about the clueless PR pitches he has received. Scoble prefers to be pitched over dinner, from my notes:

The way pr is practiced is just lame. Why anyone pitches you on email is stupid, chances of listening are one percent.
I get far more value having someone come over and have dinner with me tell me something cool. Brian Solis had dinner with ten bloggers and made a fun and subtle pitch at the end.
Jeremy Toeman showed me a block of wood became Bug Labs and asked my opinion.

Wow, OK, Scoble says it is much more valuable to him to be offered a scrumptious dinner and convivial conversation with the pitch at the end. Congratulations to Brian Solis for building such a valuable relationship. Pardon me if I don’t follow his example.

Listening to Scoble’s rant gave me new respect for reporters like Joab Jackson, Chris Dorobek, Roger Hughlett, and so many others who put their readers first and don’t expect to be wined and dined.

I am happy to render small services to journalists. I am happy to submit their work to Slashdot when I think it merits it. I am happy to send news tips, whether or not Presto Vivace clients are involved. I am happy to publicly recognize their awards, and many other things. But I will not buy them lunch and I will not be their buddy. I work for my clients and they work for their readers and if we do business on any other basis we will get into trouble quickly. What Scoble is asking for is nothing less than crony journalism and I refuse to be part of that. Perhaps you have to live in Washington, DC to understand the deadly consequences of that. But I would ask Scoble to listen to his rant and try to imagine what readers, those who are neither PR nor reporters, would think of his words.

Readers don’t care whether you got a lame press release or whether you got a swank dinner. Readers want to follow the news, and it is the business of reporters to make their editorial judgment on the basis of the story.

Edit -
Robert French says the same thing, only with far more eloquence, please read the whole thing.

Jackie has a very witty take on Scoble's remarks.

More thoughts from High Talk.

Mark Story says that Scoble whines like a spoiled celebrity.
Mark Story has some additional thoughts on how PR goes wrong.

Lisa Barone turns Scoble into a verb.

PR Squared suggest that PR pros shouldn't be so sensitive.

Susan Getgood reminds us that the reasons people blog do not include hyping our clients.

David reminds us that bloggers are just not that into PR flacks.

Tom Murphy has the funniest take on the whole thing.

Ben Dillion: Can You Pitch PR By Email?

See also: The difference between relationships and cronyism

Edit ii -
A very interesting post ruined by a gratuitous reference to a glass of whiskey.

David Cay Johnston, a hero for our time

David Cay Johnston is a reporter for the Columbian Journalism Review who insisted that White House communications personnel speak on the record. Bravo! Well done!

The practice of anonymous sources survives only because editors and reporters permit it to survive.

It also survives because our profession is foolish enough to think that we can manipulate it in our favor. Our clients will never be on the receiving end of smears and rumor mongering. Oh no. Certainly not. Perish the thought.

It is a evil practice, let us put an end to it.

I can get your company on TechCrunch

Justin Thorp has an amazing post about a marketer who was prepared to spend a million dollars to dazzle TechCrunch into posting about her company.

There is an easier and cheaper way to get on TechCrunch, for $12,000 you can buy a monthly sponsorship. Obviously a post carries far more credibility than a paid advertisement, on the other hand an ad will appear when and where you want it to, to say nothing of the value of repetition.

I am surprised by all this endless angling for PR attention when you can simply buy it.

Great moments in media relations

Financial Times Sues Blackstone for Web “Fraud”

Earlier today I suggested that we were headed toward a two-tier information economy where wealthy people pay for good stuff and everyone else gets free crappy stuff. But I may have miscalculated–maybe even rich people won’t be willing to buy the good stuff.

That’s one lesson you might derive from this odd lawsuit: The Financial Times is suing Stephen Schwarzman’s Blackstone Group (BX), claiming that the private equity group has been defrauding it since 2002. How? By allowing multiple people to use a single account to access articles on the paper’s FT.com site.

There is no savings in the world that is worth generating that amount of ill will. But then, if there is one thing we have learned about these investment houses, they are a little weak on risk analysis.

In defense of smile and dial

Jeremy Pepper: In defence of Lois Whitman

But, I'm here to defend Lois - not necessarily because I think she deserves to be defended, but because PR people are missing the bigger issue. It's another typical attack on PR, and not necessarily warranted.

Online public shaming is just too easy. It can easily descend to the level of cyber bullying. It is just a question of time before this happens to all of us. Sooner or later we are going to offend someone who wants to make themselves look big at our expense.

I have rarely placed a story without making phone calls; so I keep making them. I hope I pitch them to the relevant reporter, but seriously, without a beat list it is not always clear which reporter should get the story.

Note to reporters and editors - why you should read that boring press release.

Great moments in media relations

Military gets own social network after YouTube is blocked

TroopTube is designed to help military families connect and keep in touch when separated, according to a note on the new site. Users can quickly upload videos that can be shared privately with a subset of users, or with all users on the site, the note said.

TroopTube is run by Military OneSource, which provides online information and assistance to current and former military personnel and their families.

MilitaryOne directed a Computerworld reporter to the DOD press office for a comment regarding TroopTube. That office directed a Computerworld back to MilitaryOne.

Media relations insight of the day

Stephanie Stadler

Excellent recommendation from InformationWeek's @dberlind: "All press releases should include a shrunken, tweetable URL."

One less anonymouse in the people's government

What do you mean my services are no longer required?

Days After Leak About Obama’s Aunt, Immigration Chief Julie Myers Announces Resignation

Fellow flacks, if you don't want your clients smeared in the press, then please do your part in ending the evil practice of anonymous sources.

The public relations of high profile litigation

This blog has been on record for years that the growth sectors of our profession will be those which cope with the aftermath of the misconduct, political and financial, of the past eight years.

While this blogger has no personal experience in legal public relations, some things are clear. The ideal is to fight your case in court; the reality is that what happens in the courthouse is greatly affected by the larger debate. Indeed, which controversies explode into full scale legal investigations, and which deflate will, in part, be driven by public relations. No one should think that aggressive PR can fend off potential prosecution, but it can avert fishing expeditions. In the event of investigations, or high profile congressional inquiries, good PR can minimize the damage. Console yourself with the thought that there will be so many controversies in the future that yours may be relegated to sideshow status.

First, do an internal review. What part of your present operation is likely to attract unwelcome attention? Those of the things that need to change before Henry Waxman hauls you before the cameras to berate you. Review your records management policy and be sure it can cope with the revised rules of civil procedure. It is probably advisable that you set up a meeting with your internal PR spokesman, corporate council, and CIO.

Make your friends before you need them. This blogger assumes you have a PR effort that is cultivating the reporters in your field; be sure to include a social media component to that. I recommend encouraging your employees to blog, Tweet, or participate in whatever social media attracts them. The role of house PR should be to monitor social media along with the traditional media to spot relevant trends and discussion lines.

In the event of controversy your first job is to get the facts out as soon as is consistent with accuracy. Your corporate website has a news section doesn’t it? You do post your press releases in HTML as opposed to PDF right? You do have an RSS feed on the news section of your corporate website? All these things will be critical in the event of a high profile controversy.

In the event of litigation, consider establishing an online library of the public documents connected to the case. If you choose this route you must include all the public documents in the case as a carefully edited selection will invite ridicule. A comprehensive collection of the documents tells the general public that you consider the facts to support your company.