What Press People Really Feel About PR People

Another briefing talks about the working environment for a typical reporter or editor or columnist, and the seeds of some of the attitudes they manifest. Now, let's take a look at how they feel about PR people and activities.

Re-sent releases.

Here's a précis of the way they describe a typical call from an agency person (and, we're proud to say, a few of the mentions specifically disincluded us from this description). A breathless agency person calls and asks whether or not the journalist received a release. Since the journalist typically gets 800-1500 releases per week - and fully twice that just before a major trade show - the usual honest answer is "I'm not sure."

The publicist asks whether to send it again. Some writers say no, but most say go ahead. The publicist sends it overnight; this doesn't help. A few writers say they trash overnight packages unopened; most say they read it with their other mail, and treat it the same, with no better chance of coverage. A traditional agency gets to bill from $100 to $500 for this exercise, which may be why it keeps happening.

Release woes.

There are plenty of things wrong with releases, period. Most writers swear that no intelligent being can possibly be on the sending end. They get two or three copies (sometimes more) of many releases. They get releases that have absolutely nothing to do with them or their publications, or it's painfully obvious that the publicist isn't the least familiar with either. And they get releases they will never care about, like John Doe promoted to Garbage Manager.

They view the daily mail as daily penance, an unavoidable but largely fruitless chore. And even the "good" releases (as we've discussed here before) often lack such crucial elements as company name/address/phone, product name/price, a name to contact or a date.

Letter bombs.

The mail also holds angry letters, often for all the wrong reasons. The letter may say you covered our rival, do you have something against us? Or why did you say all those mean things about our product since we're fixing all that in our unannounced plans for the next release? Or, would you please give us some favorable coverage, because if you don't, the company may fail.

Dumb phone.

And they complain about the calls with news stories to review editors, the review queries to news reporters, bulletins to publications without a news section, uninvited products in the mail (which some welcome), and the infamous "You have to run a story about us because we advertise with you."

Ad reps.

As an aside to the latter, if an ad sales rep asks for release materials, you should know that the release has a better chance of becoming a story if it reaches the editor directly. Editors openly or secretly tend to resent (as a church/state issue) incursions onto their turf from the sales side. Also, many ad sales reps use info they glean from releases as an excuse for a sales call, on the premise that an ad can help let the world know about your new whatever.

A good idea.

At least one enterprising writer has suggested that every company keep a list of the 10-100 most influential journalists or industry observers in its category and automatically send new products to that list, every time, without fail. The idea has some merit, so we promised to pass it on here.

Strangers.

The biggest common complaint we hear is that vendors and publicists don't spend enough time reading and getting to know the publications and columns they (we) claim to be so important to them (us). We know we don't fall into that and we don't think you do, but if it's a widespread enough phenomenon to earn such disfavor, perhaps we ought to better capitalize on our own differentiation.