Catching Flack

Twitter, the microblogging site, is becoming a force to be reckoned with in the online and PR worlds.

Last week, PR 2.0 guru Brian Solis announced the creation of @micropr, a Twitter identity media and others can use to ask for assistance with stories and other information.

Previously, Solis posted a wide-ranging guide to using Twitter for communications.

If you’re not on board the Twitter express, this would be a good time to get started. Take a tip from someone who has been through many an economic cycle: there’s no time like the present to make yourself more valuable by understanding the latest technologies and tools. Those are the people it’s hardest to cut when the cutting begins.

As it happens, my colleagues and I at Bulldog Reporter have jumped on this train as well, and we’ll be presenting the first-ever webinar panel of Twittering journalists in a conference call on Thursday, Dec. 11.

Journalists Speak Out on Twitter for PR: How the Media Uses Social Networks

Speakers:

Brian Stelter, Reporter, The New York Times

Julio Ojeda-Zapata, Consumer Technology Reporter, St. Paul Pioneer Press and Author, “Twitter Means Business: How Microblogging Can Help or Hurt Your Company”

Ina Fried, Senior Writer, CNET News

Chris O’Brien, Business Columnist, San Jose Mercury News

Dan Patterson, Digital Audio Manager, ABC News

More Twitter resources:

Twitter Wiki — newbies corner

Ogilvy PR’s blog — Lots of good and easy-to-understand Twitter posts

The Internet may have changed everything, but let’s face it, most Americans still get a lot of their news and information from local TV news. And the principles of getting local TV coverage remain the same:

• Keep it simple and direct and relevant to the day’s news
• Make sure — MAKE SURE — you have good visuals to illustrate your story

Compared to print, PR actually has a better shot at developing good relationships with TV journalists, and here’s why: they need us more. “People think I have relationships with John Chambers [Cisco CEO] or Meg Whitman [ex-eBay CEO] but I don’t,” says Scott Budman, tech reporter for NBC Bay Area (KNTV-11). “I don’t. I have relationship with you [PR people].”

Translation: writers have more time to develop relationships and hence don’t need the PR person as an intermediary as much. TV people have intense jobs that require a lot of logistical coordination [lighting, locations, backgrounds, etc.] so we PR types can come in handy — if we know what we’re doing.

PRSA Silicon Valley had a “meet the editors” day at KNTV last week, and Budman & Co. gave a great inside look at how a TV newsroom really operates.

(more…)

It may look easy, but creating a smooth-running, entertaining national news or talk show is super-stressful. Simply producing TV is hard, and producing it to compete on the national stage is daunting. The people who rise to that level of the media are talented, tough and hard-working by definition.

So if you want to get on one of their shows, should you a) pitch like you always do or b) spend an extraordinary amount of time crafting the absolutely best pitch you can? It’s a rhetorical question, because the answer is obviously b).

I just finished an hour moderating a fascinating Bulldog Reporter webinar with Susan Harrow, author of “The Ultimate Guide to Getting Booked on Oprah,” who discussed the tips and techniques for breaking through with national talk shows.

The overriding message? Bring your A-game. Pitch incredible personal stories or novel products or services, not me-too drivel. Do your homework and be completely ready to go when you get that coveted call from a producer. Think through your entire segment. Practice with a media trainer to hone your skills.

This is true whether you are pitching The Oprah Winfrey Show or the NBC Nightly News. These people have the world, literally, to choose from. If you want to break through, raise your game to their level — don’t expect them to drop down to yours and help you.

Fresh Air on NPR is probably the most desirable radio talk show placement, particularly for an author. You get lots of time, and host Terry Gross will engage you at a level that will really let people get to know you and your point of view.

Naturally, therefore, the competition to get on the show is brutal. After all, it’s on only five days a week, and oftentimes, they don’t even use new interviews, preferring instead to replay an old interview because the person has died, or written a new book or is starring in a new movie. Like I said, it’s a really tough hit to get, making it all the more valuable.

So you can probably use all the advice you can get, right?

So give a round of thanks to Debbie Stier at The 26th Story, who scored an interview with Fresh Air producer Amy Salit. It’s a short interview so you can head over to their blog to read it, but here are a few gems:

What makes a great interview?

[On] radio… you can feel if the person is speaking spontaneously. If they are, you can hear them thinking through their ideas. Their passion and enthusiasm comes through. They need to be talking to Terry instead of giving a lecture. I also like to hear something new, either to help explain a situation in society, or to reveal something new about a celebrity guest.

Pity the poor quickie biographer — trying to cash in on the sudden fame of a national figure by rushing a book into publication and onto store shelves in enough time to harvest some pre-Election Day sales. After all, if the candidate loses, those books will be remaindered quicker than you can say Elizabeth Hasselbeck.

The biographer in question is Liza Mundy, whose day job is with the Washington Post. And the subject is not Barack Obama, but his wife Michelle.

In an incredibly whiny post on Slate about her trials and tribulations trying to write the book, Mundy complains bitterly about the way the Obama campaign clamped down on access to everyone but the family plumber (oh, whoops), leaving Mundy to interview such insiders as her high school classmates.

Gee, I can’t think of any reason why the Obama campaign might not want a Washington Post reporter delving into Michelle Obama’s life for a book timed to come out right before the election, can you? You’ve got the first biracial man running for President, with his African-American wife who would be First Lady if he’s elected, and you’ve got a ravenous media and blogosphere just waiting with their toothy jaws ajar to devour any personal tidbit that might prove salacious and newsworthy (see: Bill Ayers, Kenyan heritage, etc.).

Memo to Mundy: sorry, but this is hardball. And in the immortal words of Tom Hanks in “A League of Their Own”: There’s no crying in baseball.

The bad PR pitches highlighted in yesterday’s post about the new Dear PR Flack site are half of the equation. What about the other: bad reporting and writing skills?

Just as in any profession, there are some good journalists and a lot of mediocre ones. And just as in any profession, the good ones tend to rise to the top, while those with lesser skills make a living farther down the career ladder. It’s not a perfect system, but you can usually guess that a Wall Street Journal reporter is more talented and experienced journalist than a typical trade or small-town newspaper reporter.

What this means for PR people is that you a) have to know who you are pitching or targeting and b) adjust your approach accordingly. And when you are dealing with individual journalists, you have to be on the lookout for hints into their level of professionalism.

(more…)

There’s a delicious new blog tracking the misguided pitches of PR people: Dear PR Flack.

As this blog has noted before, journalists have always resented PR people and the relentless stream of bad pitches we send. But now, the Internet allows the journos to vent their rage. This new blog takes the venting to a new level, as bloggers pointedly critique the pitches they are getting.

So far, they’re aren’t taking it as far as Chris Anderson of Wired and posting the offenders’ email addresses on the net for all to copy and spam, but I suppose it’s just a matter of time.

The teaching here is to read these entertaining critiques and learn something from them about pitching better!

Here’s a sample of a recent Dear PR Flack post:

Dear PR Flack:

Given that the tagline of our blog is “The Continuing Adventures of a Couple of San Francisco Food Dorks”, what made you think we’d be interested in how The Lower East Side celebrates New York City Apple Day?

And, by the by, there’s no such thing as a “first annual” anything. The word you’re grasping for is “inaugural”.

xoxo,

Anita

There was an interesting moment in the McCain-Obama debate on Tuesday when Tom Brokaw asked both of them “Who do you have in mind for Treasury Secretary?”

It was a pretty stupid question, actually, since Brokaw knows full well that neither is in a position to reveal this information even if they know for sure who they would nominate. But sometimes in media interviews you get stupid questions, and you still have to answer them with something other than “no comment.”

Unfortunately for McCain, he had to go first, so he stumbled around a bit before trying to “bridge” his answer to safer ground talking about the economy in general. Then Obama got to go, piggybacking on McCain’s suggestion of Warren Buffett (very unlikely, totally safe suggestion) to give a direct answer and then bridging to his safer ground of talking about the economy.

And that’s the point — when you get one of these questions, you first have to give some sort of credible answer, then “bridge” with a line like, “but the larger point is…” to your safe ground of your pre-prepared talking points.

The transcript follows to further demonstrate what I’m talking about:

(more…)

Interesting post by CBS’s Dean Reynolds comparing his experiences serving in Barack Obama’s traveling press corps and then recently switching to John McCain’s. It gives you a little insight into how at least one journalist views the the treatment the press corps has received from the two camps, and serves as a little insight into media relations from the journalist’s perspective.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that a campaign that does a good job taking care of the press is going to see a marginal improvement in their coverage compared to not doing anything, though I’m not sure that a campaign that doesn’t take care of the press is going to see an incremental decline in their coverage. It’s a lot easier to return a favor by giving someone the benefit of the doubt than it is to intentionally retailiate for perceived slights.

Reynolds describes Obama’s media relations as chaotic and his PR people often out of touch, while describing the McCain camp as friendly and organized.   

(more…)

There are basically two ways to use PR to get a story in the media: pitch an idea to a journalist and have them do a story, or respond to a journalist seeking information for a story.

The latter, of course, is somewhat easier and infinitely less stressful.

Within the category of responding to queries, there are two subsets: call them the “retail” method and the “wholesale” method.

“Retail“: Having personal relationships with journalists so that when they need a source or quote for a story, they call or email you.

“Wholesale“: Subscribing to a service that sends you queries from journalists you don’t know, allowing you to respond and pitch your angle for the story.

Until recently, the wholesale method has been dominated by ProfNet, a service of PRNewswire. ProfNet’s service is free for journalists seeking sources, but costs PR agencies and other practitioners hundreds or thousands of dollars a year to subscribe, depending on size. Nevertheless, legions of PR pros subscribe to ProfNet for the simple reason that it works.

ProfNet now has significant competition from HARO, or “Help a Reporter Out.” It’s the quirky service run by New York PR guy Peter Shankman, who started it as a Facebook group. But it has grown and grown, and now claims 33,000 members who receive Shankman’s daily emails with queries from journalists. Unlike ProfNet, HARO is free to both journalists and subscribers, with Shankman making money on it by selling ads on his emails.

So if you’re looking to beef up your access to media queries, check out ProfNet and HARO. And if you’re interested in more of the backstory about these two rivals, check out this in-depth article from AdWeek.