Still Too Many Strike Outs With Media Pitching

I recently heard about a new website called Help A Reporter Out (HARO), created by Peter Shankman, who is a PR consultant with several global clients.

He also happens to be very well connected to many journalists (some who he calls good friends). Peter came up with the idea to start a Facebook group to link these journalists with subject matter experts and those who can offer a relevant perspective for inclusion in articles.

HARO, which outgrew Facebook and is now its own site, is very similar to ProfNet, whereby daily e-mails with story leads are sent out, except Peter's service is free (for now) and is run by an individual entrepreneur vs. ProfNet which is fee-based and run by PR Newswire. No surprise ProfNet is none too happy with HARO, and the company apparently had some choice words for Shankman.

I subscribe to ProfNet and find the service useful. Some of my pitching efforts have materialized into an interview with my company's spokespeople, or the journalist's use of some information from one of our white papers. I was curious about HARO and signed up around noon to receive Peter's e-mails. I got my first one at 2pm. It was actually quite humourous before Peter got into the actual story leads of the day, which turned out to be unrelated to what my company specializes in (but I still see Peter's service complementing ProfNet's so that I can stay connected with the latest opportunities).

Unfortunately, I wasn't surprised to read about some publicists using Shankman's service for, to put it bluntly, 'throwing enough $hit against the wall, and hoping something will stick'.

I would like to hope that it's just a few bad weeds who have neither the intelligence nor the creativity to construct a well thought out pitch that cuts to the chase. But I'm afraid I'm wrong, and in my 7 years in this industry, I've seen and heard about it all too often. I also subscribe to Cision MediaSource, and in the 'pitching tips' section of a journalist's profile, one of the most common things I read is 'Please read my blog/story archive before pitching' or 'Please direct all pitches to the appropriate beat reporter.'

With the media's seeming inundation with bad pitches, it's no wonder why journalists generally cringe when they talk about PR folks. It's an ongoing issue.

It's a real shame, because I as well as many others (both on the PR and media side) have seen how the relationship between the two can be amicable and symbiotic.

I hope that PR schools out there are teaching our future practitioners about the art of media relations. It's not about viewing the media as a catch-all for anything and everything that the companies you represent are engaged in. The fact is, a journalist won't care about your client's latest innovation in food steaming technology when their main priority is to report on government issues. Learn to do it well, and you'll only be doing a favor to client and to your career in the long run.