Comments on: Reporters Are People, Too, So Stop Annoying Them with These 3 Habits

By: Josh Loftin

Josh Loftin — Tue, 24 Jun 2014 16:36:36 +0000

The best way to get a reporter to not cover your story is to force them to commit yes or no. Also, if you do get a yes on coverage but then the reporter doesn’t get there, don’t call or email to berate them. Instead, follow-up and ask if they need anything additional — they will often ask for pictures and statements and write a brief recap anyway.

As for social media, most reporters view Twitter as mostly professional. (Facebook is framily and LinkedIn for current and future bosses). A great thing to do is send your reporter- friends a pitch but then write a general press release and post it to Twitter. Odds are decent they will see it and, like the example in the last graf, will write a brief on it.

As an aside, writing press releases and posting them to your website or blog is great for SEO. I use PRWeb (Vocus) a bit and it’s surprising how much traffic comes to website from the releases.

By: Alessandra Malvermi

Alessandra Malvermi — Wed, 07 May 2014 13:09:58 +0000

I totally agree. Bad habits are the same everywhere!

By: David Landis

David Landis — Tue, 06 May 2014 20:50:44 +0000

Kathleen – and I’d add: never, ever, ever call and say, “Did you get my press release?” Best way to undermine a reporter relationship. Cheers, David

By: Catharine

Catharine — Tue, 06 May 2014 19:53:43 +0000

Great post, Kathleen. When showing interns the pitching ropes, I’ll often play the role of the reporter to see how the intern will act on the phone during. After the intern gets through their elevator speech, I’ll respond “Great. Can you just email me this though?” Without fail, every time I ever connect with a reporter he or she encourages me to email the information, as that’s the best way to get a response.

Once, after calling a reporter when she didn’t respond to my pitch, I reached her personal line by mistake. It was then that I found out she was fired from the publication six months ago. OOPS.

I think I’ll stick to emails…