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The future of the press release: evolve or die die die
Rumours about the death of the press release have been greatly exaggerated, but the medium has been on life support for some time.
Wired editor in chief Chris Anderson earlier this week published a blacklist of PR people who had committed the sin of spamming press releases instead of sending pitches that catered to his interests. He advertised the existence of his black list on his blog and made sure to include the email addresses of the culprits.
Anderson's suggestion brings to mind Tom Foremski's plea for killing the press release. In his February 2006 blog posting, Foremski suggests tagging press releases to indicate sections where This would allow journalist/bloggers to automatically piece together stories.
Anderson's and Foremski's measures are complementary and could both help improve the press release. I fully support both efforts.
Tagged releases benefit journalists who already decided that they will write about a certain topic. The blacklists prevents incompetent PR from wasting a journalist's time with their pitches.
Too many PR folks mistake the press release for a personal conversation with somebody they know. My personal worst practices list is topped by emails that start with "story suggestion" and ones that put my name in the subject line. The first one appeals to my journalistic sense of independence.
But the biggest frustration is when a PR agency (they are always agencies) call to pitch a new product or an event and they don't even know what it is about: they are unable to answer any questions about the product and instead read up the useless, opening line from the draft press release. If only phone services would offer a black list, I would be an avid user.
This tends to happen especially when the economy is doing well. Big profits tend to attract PR incompetence.
image borrowed from Silicon Valley Watcher
November 1, 2007 at 10:00 PM | Permalink
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Comments
^^^^ Oh, the irony...
Posted-by: Shaun | 2 Nov 2007 19:44:17
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