Five Surefire Ways to Annoy a Reporter

You want your press release to get picked up. You may not know it, but the reporters you contact want your story. However, there are a handful of bad practices that drive your contacts insane. All of this could add up to your story going nowhere—or worse.

1. You pester them.
Want to immediately get on a reporter’s bad side? Call them up constantly while they’re on deadline or conducting an interview. And then ask them why your story isn’t in the paper or online yet.
Eventually they will not only ignore you, but all your future press releases as well.

2. You pitch terrible stories.
Reporters review a lot of content every day. Whether they write it, edit it, or just read it and roll their eyes, they see about ten million words a day. The last thing they want to read is another awful pitch that has nothing to do with their readers.

Make sure the story or press release you submit makes sense for the reporter you’re pitching. If not, he or she might begin to think everything you submit is a waste of time. Ask yourself: Would you read your story? If not, don’t send it out.



3. You write crappy headlines.
This one will annoy the poor intern who covers the press release emails more than the reporters themselves, but every person counts! Your headline is your best shot to get a journalist’s attention. If it stinks, or worse, totally misleads, you’re sunk.
Again, reporters see tons of stories every day. The poor intern may get very excited about your headline and send it to his or her editor; but, if the story isn’t all that great, you’ve just wasted their time.
 
4. You are a jerk.
There’s no reason why your story deserves to be in the headlines more than any other. You could think it’s the most important story ever. But in the end, it’s more than likely just an interesting story among many others. Don’t annoy the reporter who may give you a chance—that will do nothing for you. Reporters are extremely busy people who want to do a good job and go home, just like you.


5. You don’t aid them when they need it.
The reporter/PR pro relationship isn’t a one-way street. It takes a lot of work on both parties to fulfill the relationship. You have to keep in mind reporters have a limited space to run all the good stories they come across each day.

Want to get in their good graces? Help them out when they need it. Be a source or give them a lead on an important story in the community. If you refuse, there’s no reason why they should scratch your back when you won’t scratch theirs.

A version of this story first appeared on PR Fuel.

Which Newswires are the Most Valuable to Journalists?

Newswire services are big business and are used by companies and PR agencies to spread news stories to journalists/bloggers and online. These services often make much of the size of their journalist databases and offer their ability to reach these journalists as a key selling point.

Survey results: how journalists use newswires

Firstly, to clarify, when we say newswires we mean press release feeds or press release distribution services – these terms are often used interchangeably and, as one of our respondents pointed out, there’s a clear distinction between services such as Reuters, PA and Bloomberg (which carry original articles by journalists) and press release feeds.

We surveyed 80 journalists from our own contact lists across a variety of industries, but as we are a technology PR agency, we didn’t include industries that we don’t target, such as fashion and property. Our survey targets did include consumer and business tech, marketing, cleantech, ecommerce/retail and the automotive sectors and we think these results are applicable across the board.
Journalists from daily newspapers to well respected websites and freelancers took the time to help us to understand:

• How often do you use newswires?
• Which newswires are the most valuable?
• What do you use newswires for?
• What do you prefer newswires do for you?

We suspected that there would be neutral to negative feedback overall, but there were a few ‘forthright’ views expressed:
“Why do companies and PRs still target these useless muppets to waste journalists’ time bombarding them with irrelevant stories. Do your homework properly, build up your own media contacts list and deal with them directly.”

The issue of filtering came up several times as did bypassing a log in screen:
“They need better customisation options to provide more accurate content”
“Speed is critical to my job and not having to log in to a newswire service to view articles is essential to me.”
“I like BusinessWire as the links included in their emails go directly to the articles without having to log in first. I started out using PRNewswire but stopped as you have to log in each time you want to view the articles they email out.”
Onto the results of the survey.

How often do journalists use newswires?

• 37% of journalists use wires daily
• 30% of journalists use wires occasionally
• 21% of journalists never use wires
  

How often journalists use press release distribution services

Which newswires are the most valuable?

We asked respondents to indicate which services they found most valuable in their work, from this list:

• Businesswire
• Cisionwire
• Marketwire
• Newswire Today
• PR Fire
• Press Association
• Press Dispensary
• PRNewswire
• PRWeb
• Realwire
• Sourcewire
• Other

54% found that PR Newswire was the most valuable newswire followed by PA (38%), SourceWire (37%) and Businesswire (34%).
Although PA (Press Association) provides news stories written by journalists, it also allows companies and PR agencies to pay for release distribution.The PR Newswire positioning also reflects our unofficial ranking in our mini-review of paid press release distribution services.
Newswires specific to particular verticals were also mentioned by individual journalists NewsPress (automotive), Headline Auto (automotive), Gamespress and Technology4Media.
Based upon the comments we received, journalists indicated (perhaps unsurprisingly) that industry-specific services tend to be more valuable.
Press release distribution services ranked by journalists (longer bars are better)
Here are some of the comments from journalists about how the services could be improved, so if anyone from wire services is reading, get your notepad out:

• “None of them are comprehensive so you end up with all the biggest bug bears with wires at various points filtering and targeting and ease-of-use.”
• “Wish they had better filtering. The categories are always too broad.”
• Newswires are great things but they never manage to target accurately enough – there are rarely stories that suit me.”
• “Important that EVERY news item is relevant and useful otherwise you end up wading through releases.”

What do you use newswires for?

78% use them for news stories, while 56% use wires for article and feature ideas and 56% for monitoring industry trends.
The mass news distribution offered by wires is a negative for some journalists, especially freelancers who benefit from exclusivity: “From the freelancer's point of view newswires are problematic because everyone has the same resources. My ability to earn a living depends on the exclusivity of the content I can offer, so it's difficult to see where they fit in except as a resource for general background.”
“I did once pitch a story from one, when I was much younger - the conversation went, ‘I've just found this story out’...’Thanks, so have I’, said the editor. Which kind of short circuits the whole thing.”
Fact checking seems to be a useful service. Specific journalist feedback includes:
“Writing news for a monthly print publication I simply use newswires as an easy way to find/verify information. They are often faster/easier than navigating corporate websites and press rooms. Links in wire releases to images and more information are particularly useful.”
“As a subeditor I mainly check wires when fact checking articles for the website. It’s not a huge necessity for me to check them for feature ideas. I suppose the most important factors for me when using wires are an easy search function and quick accessibility.

What do you prefer newswires do for you?

We asked if journalists would like press releases direct to their inbox, a link to a place to visit, or to be left alone by the wire services.
How journalists want to engage with newswire services
Most respondents wanted a place to visit to access releases and news, this preference was just ahead at 37% while 33% wanted targeting emails to their inbox (8% didn’t want anything from the wire services).
Digging into these results did show some differences:

• 60% of respondents who used newswires services to monitor industry trends, said they would prefer a place to visit and check news vs. 36% who wanted releases sent to their inbox
• Journalists working on national publications expressed a strong preference for having a place to visit (88%).

It's Hard Out There To Be a Reporter

The good 'ole days of being a reporter are fading fast as the news "world" is feeling the hard crunch of the recession. Newspapers are retiring, reporters are getting laid off and the landscape of news as we know it will never be the same... even right here in Houston. While we have weathered the recession pretty well it's slowly catching up with us.


Just check this out from the Houston Chronicle today. "Belo, which owns KHOU, said Wednesday it will cut 150 jobs, reduce salaries for some employees by 5% and will suspend 401(k) matching contributions in an effort to help reduce cash operating expenses by about 10%."

Ouch.

So, what does this mean for the legal professional? For one, getting your story in the news will not be as easy as it used to be. If you really have a newsworthy story, you can't wait for the reporter to find you, you gotta find the reporter. Why? Because there are so few out there. And, if you really have a good story, you are going to have to "sell" it.

So my word of advice to all lawyers out there is to get used to this new media landscape because it's going to be permanent. And things will probably get worse before they get better. You now are not only an advocate for your client, but now you are one for yourself. What do you think?