Valley PR Blog

Pitching to incredible shrinking newsrooms

By Charlotte Risch on May 21st, 2008 In Pitching

If you haven’t signed up to recieve HARO emails, do it! I only do Phoenix PR, but having a free way to get my clients some national exposure is pretty awesome. I even pitched myself to a reporter for Ragan.com and you can find my “secret” tip included in this very relevant and timely topic for PR professionals “Shrinking Newsrooms Demand Sharper Pitching Skills“. This article is right on about the challenges we have to get our pitches noticed. I hear it all the time when I talk to my friends and associates in newsrooms…they just have a lot of work and less people around to help them get it done. This also means you see more and more AP and syndicated articles…which drive me crazy when its a topic that could have been localized. (for example, the big article on BBQ sauces in today’s Arizona Republic)

Whatever you can do for a reporter, producer or editor helps. Like including source phone numbers, times of availability for interviews, interview locations and hi-res photos in your pitch. Now, I am not gonna say that hi-res photos ALWAYS work, but they sure do help when pitching a new product. I try to remember everything in the pitch, but once in a while I screw up…like forgetting to include the price of a new product. By the time the reporter asks me “How much?” they have picked up the phone and just called the store to find out. Ugh. and “Duh!” on my part.

What else can you suggest to help reporters out?

Comments

I’ve noticed a lot of different reporters are asking me for quotes from people within my company via e-mail. And they don’t mind when the e-mail comes from me rather than the person being quoted. It seems like there’s not even time for an old-fashioned interview these days.

While this doesn’t really answer your question, it’s simply an observation. Such a thing used to be a BIG no-no when I was in the industry.

Interesting shift. Perhaps it would be very worthwhile to stretch a bit and work on crafting more “quoteable” quotes for news releases beyond the usual press release quote jargon — such as, “We are excited..blah blah blah.” Of course, you’ll have to work on making sure your company/client approves of this change. It sure seems like reporters are more than willing to use these kinds of quotes now.

I agree on the quotes for releases. I used to do the whole “we are excited” thing..but now try to use that quote to help instill the message of the news release topic with an interesting stat or fact.

Media Meetings - actually meeting with a reporter face to face and showing them all of the clients and other ways you can help them when they are on deadline…

If I happen to be speaking to a reporter, I’ll often ask, “What else are you working on?” It’s not only helpful for me to know, but a lot of times I have a resource (not necessarily a client) that I can refer them to. It’s one step less for the reporter.

Kinda like, one call does it all…what law firm is that??

Also, this is so PR 101, but knowing reporter deadlines. Every journalist has a different workflow, so I ask when the best time is to approach them. It may not be anywhere near their deadline, but working yourself into their schedule makes them more efficient.

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