I bet you're one of those up-tight, annoying, unable to communicate with other people type journalists with a chip on your shoulder the size of a banana… Let's face it, you're hardly at the top of your game. Mobile Indusry…. who?

I'm adding you to my list of 'journalists not to contacted with a good scoop'.

Cheers (a senior PR pro)…

I bet you're one of those up-tight, annoying, unable to communicate with other people type journalists with a chip on your shoulder the size of a banana… Let's face it, you're hardly at the top of your game. Mobile Indusry…. who?

I'm adding you to my list of 'journalists not to contacted with a good scoop'.

Cheers (a senior PR pro)…

2008/8/26 Disqus <>

Years ago, I was Communications Director at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, a big think tank in Washington, DC. If a reporter called in wanting an expert to comment on some breaking news story, and I didn't have anyone at my organization covering that issue, I didn't just say, oh sorry, we don't have anyone and hang up. I got him an expert, even if it meant getting someone from a competing think tank, or the State Department, or wherever.

Nine times out of 10 I got him an expert within 15 minutes, and I didn't just pass on a name and number, I called and verified the expert was available before passing the contact on to the reporter.

My entire staff followed that directive and, as a result, reporters came to us first when they needed an expert to quote – and usually we DID have someone on staff they could interview. In the three years I was there, we boosted press mentions by 450 percent, to more than 6000 a year.

Every PR person should think of the following when starting a communications campaign: 1. What's my product? 2. Who's my audience? 3. What do I want them to do? and 4. Why should THEY want to do it?

In this case, my product was expertise, and what I wanted reporters to do was call me first. Why should they want to do that? Because on a tight deadline, I'd get them an expert. Like Macy's sending shoppers to Gimbels in that old Christmas classic – we got more business than ever.

@ fmoran – I couldn't agree more, with both of your points. Coverage is about so much more than news and the predominant agency model is certainly broken.

We, on the other hand, have built entire programs that we expect will be completely free of news releases. The core strategy is to establish our clients as authorities in a particular domain and then openly invite, and be terribly responsive to, media inquiries when they come in. I wrote a post recently about one of our better examples of this strategy: http://www.dangletech.com/inthemedia/howdoyouge.

On a more sober note, the response you experienced is the inevitable outcome of an entrenched-but-broken agency model that sees the most labour-intensive task — actual outreach — relegated to the lowest-cost resource in the agency, a junior who probably wasn't even at the client briefing, didn't write the materials, built a contact list by punching some keywords into a database and knows nothing more about the client than what is in that day's news release.

No wonder these people can't help you.

Out of interest, have you ever tried asking Apple's PR agency if they have any news? I'm sure they are a great agency, but I would be surprised if they could magic up news for such a company at the drop of a hat.

LOS ANGELES, Calif. / BERLIN, Germany / OSLO, Norway, August 18, 2008