Bookmark this Page if You Want to Pitch Me (Or Any Reporter)

as a PR person who has never pitched Sarah, I approve this message!

Great Post. I just sent it to my PR agency (which, for me, is me).

Plus I Twittered and Stumbled (first one)

Shaun Dakin
StopPoliticalCalls.org

Golden - I'm still dumbfounded by the amount of PR people that get names wrong and also don't understand what the company / person they're approaching actually does!!! Most of these basic faux pas could be avoided if you actually spent a minute to read someone's blog!

While TechTickler does sound strangely intriguing, thanks for the sanity check.

Good kick in the ass for those who need it! As someone who has worked both sides of the fence, the pitching process can be hell for each side. If it's not personal, it doesn't work! As someone who follows you but hasn't pitched you (but might some day) one thing that might be helpful is if you list your contact preferances so those who aren't press release spammers know how to break through the noise and deliver you something that could be of interest and value to you and your readers. For instance, contact me via ____. My best days for reviewing pitches are____ and I only accept calls from____ on ___. My focus this month is ____. Also, when I was getting pitches I had an auto-reply that laid out my prefs to give PR people the benefit of the doubt and tips on what will get things moving.... Anyway,
you rock Sarah!

hmmm . . . that's funny don't PR people and Journalists all graduate from the same department, with the same degree in mass communications? Also don't PR people and journalists sorta need each other? I think there are clueless people on both sides of the spectrum - Just sayin'

As a PR person, YES, AGREED and THANK YOU.

I would also add that PR people should spend time actually READING what you write and making their pitch relevant to what you write about. But then, point number one focused on your name alone, so perhaps we should keep things simple.

I don't know why we've gotten to the point where every reporter is having to educate PR pros about the obvious. But until the problem is resolved, I will pass these stories on with gratitude.

Amen!!!

Did someone really say TechTickler?

As someone who gets called "Meg Flower" and "Maggie Fowler" and "Megan Fowler" (it's Meaghan!) by PR people (who proceed to get my URL right because they cut and pasted it), I can't imagine how many misspellings you must get. Sarah is one that NO one gets right, which is absurd because it's just an H, people! Put it on there!

I need more coffee, too.

@raven: actually no! i never took a journalism class in my life. in fact most working journalists i know do not have journalism degrees. nice try though! ;)

@damata: good point. I wrote about this some here: http://www.sarahlacy.com/sarahlacy/2008/05/what-about-semi.html

but mostly, email is the best medium. don't be cute and try to pitch me via facebook or twitter unless we are friends and don't EVER call my cell. i do read all my emails and respond to most of them. if i don't respond, i read it, i was just probably busy and it was WAY out of the ballpark. i do NOT mind getting well thought out pitches even if they seem like a longshot. but you'll get best results if you spend about half an hour checking out the kinds of things i do for Yahoo and the kinds of things I write for BusinessWeek (much of which are handily collected on this blog!)

for extra credit: if you read my blog or follow me on twitter you get a lot of insight into what i'm thinking about. a lot of columns and techticker pieces grow out of blog posts that created a lot of discussion and debate among my readers.

thanks for turning my rant into something productive, damata! ;)

Great points, Stacy, I'll look you up next time I'm in Denver to take you out and tell you about a really interesting tech company which you'll want to mention in the Tickler, trust me! cheers

Listen Lacy Lucy--us PR people have heinous egomaniacle clients yanking our chains all day so we need to pass some of the abuse on!! :-) Actually everything you say is a huge pet peeve of mine and if a staffer here gets a reporter's name wrong or delivers bad info--they are, to mimic Trump--FIRED!

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Great post... and another thing. When did "doing your homework" before a meeting stop becoming standard business practice.

Before I call or meet someone, I want to do as much homework as I can on the person. Not just the obvious stuff you mention, but background as well. Jeez it's all on the internet isn't it?

I had a meeting recently, and the person pulled out a dossier on me. I was very impressed they'd done their homework. The meeting was FAR more productive then most.

as a pr guy, i hate reading the horror stories about bad pitches by others in my industry. it makes my job that much harder.

on the other hand, i love reading the horror stories because they (hopefully) motivate us to do BETTER!

This blog Is very informative , I am really pleased to post my comment on this blog . It helped me with ocean of knowledge so I really belive you will do much better in the future . Good job web master .

Yes, most of PR people they like this.