An open query to Robert Scoble
Dear Robert:
You have declared that all email pitches suck. You have made it clear in a variety of venues (including a comment to this post and another comment here) that PR professionals, if they are going to do their jobs and get visibility for their clients, must find other ways capture the attention not only of bloggers, but of journalists. You have declared that “real journalists” with whom you spend time have told you exactly the same thing.
You have told those who take issue with your declarations that they are defending the indefensible (something to which I have responded in this blog, a post to which you have not commented).
Given your intractable position repeated in multiple places, Robert, I wonder if you’d be willing to comment on the findings of the 2009 PRWeek/PR Newswire media survey that found that 80% of journalists prefer to receive pitches by email. Journalists maintain this preference even though these pitches generate a paltry number of actual stories because they are so often off-target.
That’s right, Robert. An overwhelming majority of journalists want to get pitched by email. To put your assertion that PR is dead because of its use of email pitching into even greater context, the survey found that only 7% of respondents said they don’t want PR people contacting them at all. The rest evidently find value in getting pitches, even if they have to sift through the garbage to find the gems.
I wonder if you might be willing to concede that things may be different in the tech journalism/blogging world than the rest of the world, and that you’re viewing the situation with blinders on? I wonder if you might admit that all email pitches don’t suck when faced with the incontrovertible evidence offered up by 2,174 traditional and non-traditional media reported in the survey (including online reporters and bloggers)? I wonder if you’re willing to simply admit that you’re wrong?
Don’t take my word for it, Robert. You’ll find a summary of survey results here.
Of course, PR people should use multiple channels to do their jobs. If a journalist or blogger says he prefers not to receive email, email shouldn’t be the tool used. In the tech world, email should be used judiciously, but if it’s the method a journalist or blogger prefers, it should be used. And I’m sure you’ll find it heartening to know that 31% of the survey respondents say they have been pitched via social media channels, like Twitter and Facebook.
And, as I’ve said countless times, there’s no excuse for the flood of PR spam that violates every principle of professional communications. But there are bad actors in every profession (even bloggers and videographers), and no amount of whining will make them go away.
All of which makes it hard to dismiss a statistically valid study that shows 80% of journalists (and the sample included bloggers) prefer to be pitched by email. It’s hard to dismiss rock-solid evidence, isn’t it?
I anxiously await your reconciliation of this evidence with your assertion that all PR email sucks.
Sincerely,
Shel Holtz
P.S. I’m done blogging and podcasting about this non-issue at this point, but I will respond to comments.
UPDATE: In case you’re interested, this post was cross-posted to Social Media Today, where it’s generating its own set of comments.
Shel,
Good job of bringing out the stats. I think many practitioners understand that a few influencers may make loud pronouncements, but if you don’t pay attention to the needs of each individual on your media list, you will lose.
And those stats reflect reality.
I was talking to a newsperson who is very active on Twitter, and he informed me that if I pitched him via Twitter or Facebook, he would unfollow me. Give it to him via email or even the dreaded phone call. For those who still pitch to old school media, you are finding that Facebook is still a new frontier and Twitter has yet to land on their radar.
But then again, if you are constantly monitoring your list and staying in touch, you already know the best ways to reach and pitch.
Thanks, Shel.Posted by Bryan R. Adams on 04/06 at 12:57 PMHey Shel! Thanks for these great stats. Intuitively, it seems right. Yet, all the perfectly targeted pitches I send end up with the same response from reporters: deafening silence. I wish there could be a one sentence response from them sometimes. Either say, “Sorry, your story idea is stupid,” or “Not my beat, try John Smith in XYZ dept.” or “Can’t use it now, but keep me on your list for this subject.”
Is it so hard for reporters and bloggers to respond to at least well-targeted pitches? I don’t blame them for deleting spammy ones, but jeez. There has to be a happy medium.
It’s kind of sad that reporter and PR people have been pitted against each other in such a juvenille way. Can’t we all just get along? :~)
Claire
Posted by Claire Celsi on 04/06 at 02:45 PMGreat post Shel. Love the smack down. I look forward to following the comment stream. Saying all email pitches suck is like saying all reporters suck. You and I both know that isn’t true (well maybe one or two). They’re all different. The key to being a great PR person is understanding the needs and wants of the reporter you’re pitching. Some like email. Some like a phone call (I believe the old fashioned phone is still a powerful PR tool). Some reporters cruise FB and Twitter to catch interesting posts. PR people who use just one methodology miss opportunities.
Posted by Debbie Elliott on 04/06 at 03:41 PMI’ve been following this conversation (Scoble’s arguments & yours) from the onset. And, frankly, both sides make sense to me.
I hear ‘ya with the statistics, but my gut tells me the statistics represent the old way, the old life we all lived.
Most of us—particularly Baby Boomers & our younger siblings—still don’t quite grasp how much and how fast the world is changing. Clearly, it’s been hard for the Rocky Mountain News, Seattle PI, and a whole bunch of corporate PR shops to grasp the transition from print to electronic.
Likewise, the transition from e-mail (and possibly blogging as well) to something we can’t quite picture yet. My point is that the poll may be “true” but not an accurate predictor of what editors & writers really need (or want) to get comfortable with.
Posted by Elaine W Krause on 04/06 at 06:34 PMScore: Shel 1; Roberto 0.
Some reporters use bloggers as sources, much like in my day as a reporter we depended upon calls from strangers on a pay phone.
But a random pitch on a blog may never be seen by a reporter. What a dumb idea.
You have to place the pitch in front of them.
Posted by Gerard Braud on 04/06 at 06:48 PM@Claire - if journalists responded to every pitch, focused or not, they’d never get any work done. In the old days of paper press releases, and when I was a freelance, an associate and I monitored what happened during a typical month: 94 percent of press releases went in the bin at first glance and 90 percent of the remainder before we reached the end of the second paragraph.
It wasn’t just about relevance, it was about how it fitted our short term plans.
As for @Shel’s piece, I find it hard to think of a better method than email for tip offs. It’s unobtrusive and asynchronous. If PRs used phone, skype, twitter, facebook or SMS (I’m sure there are more), I’d be irritated.
Having said that, I arrived here as a result of a tweet by Neville Hobson. But then I know him and trust him and I knew what he was up to. Makes a big difference.
Posted by David Tebbutt on 04/06 at 11:15 PMI love my e-mail and hate it too. As a blogger, even really good pitches sometimes pass me by as I hurry to get the “stuff of the moment” done. Still, one in awhile, something lands.
I think the problem is general clutter.
Posted by Kami Huyse on 04/07 at 01:38 AMI’m not in the PR or professional communications industry but I know common sense when I read it. You’ve made good points Shel and I know that you know what you’re talking about.
Robert Scoble on the other hand… I think that there’s a touch of narcissism in his bold assertions. It’s obvious that Robert does not like email pitches. Hence he feels that no one should like them.
Posted by Robert Safuto on 04/07 at 03:15 AMprefer: to like, choose or want one thing rather than another
I’d prefer to have my legs broken rather than my throat slit.
Posted by ceedee on 04/07 at 04:21 AMShel, I answer you back here in a private note to PR people: http://scobleizer.com/2009/04/07/a-private-note-to-pr-people/
Posted by Robert Scoble on 04/07 at 04:28 AMWhen I was a proper news journalist (as opposed to a journo-blogger-marketing-thing like I am now) I always preferred press releases by email.
But I was also fine with people calling me if something required a fast response from me, especially if I already had a relationship with the PR or their company. If a PR I knew and trusted called me up with something, I’d know that it was worth my attention. If someone I didn’t know, from a company I’d never worked with before called, I’d be much more likely to be snappy, annoyed, etc.
And that’s the thing - try and establish real relationships with journalists, and you’ll do fine.
Posted by Ian Betteridge on 04/07 at 04:30 AMThanks Shel. Well done
As I mentioned in a comment on Scoble’s blog just now, my favorite part of a journalist’s angry rant about PR flacks is the inevitable apology!
Posted by Ian Wright on 04/07 at 05:02 AMScoble has it right: most PR stuff is crap. If PR people only sent pitches, that might be a start. But so much of it is pure spam: irrelevant, mailing-list-driven press releases, spewed in the hope that they’ll hit someone desperate.
The misconception is the belief that PR is a supply and journalism an outlet. It’s just not like that. Real journalism - the stuff people do like reading - doesn’t come from PR. Else people would just read the press releases. And we’d stay out of peoples’ way.
If lots of journalists say they’d rather get pitched by email, that’s because it’s the least worst, compared to “phoning me up on deadline” and “standing looking puppy-faced outside the newsroom door”. Actually, as Scoble says (we reached the same conclusion independently), Twitter is better - it’s 140 chars, personal, and who cares if it’s open to all. The PR-driven exclusive is, if not dead, then in intensive care being read the last rites.
Email is broken, and not just for PR. But tech journalists are the canaries. And they have found that email is broken. Others will realise that too.
Posted by Charles Arthur on 04/07 at 05:11 AM@ceedee If you’re going to descend into definitions, prefer also means favor and value. Few journalists (and this includes bloggers) come up with subjects about which to write out of the clear blue. They get leads. A lot of these leads come in the form of pitches, whether it’s a pitch to write about a product or cover an event or meet with a spokesperson. During a client engagement, I selectively pitched bloggers with the opportunity to interview the president of a company embroiled in some controversy. These were personal, targeted, and represented an offer for something exclusive (your interview would be different than somebody else’s).
So given that pitches represent a channel for discovering material to write about, yes, journalists would prefer to get them by email (which is asynchronous and allows them to ignore the bad ones) the phone (which is synchronous and requires them to interact with everybody). Would they rather not get pitched at all? Not the ones who are doing their jobs.
Posted by Shel Holtz on 04/07 at 11:57 AMFor the record, here’s the comment on left on Robert’s blog to the post he referenced here:
Thank you for this, Robert. On most issues, it seems we agree.
At the very beginning of your post, though, you suggest that the profession “get rid of all the people who send me bad pitches.” If you have a proposal for how the profession can do this, I’m all ears. There is no license required to practice PR. Anybody can hang out a shingle and accept clients, from the highly principled and ethical who strive to behave professionally to sleazebags with no training who are looking to make a fast buck.
The companies that employ the latter support the latter. And there is no shortage of clients to fuel their efforts.
The profession has been vocal in its opposition to PR spam. From the major associations (IABC, PRSA, CPRS, IPR, etc.) to individual voices (Todd Defren, Doug Haslam, Neville Hobson, myself) to industry leaders (Richard Edelman, Dave Senay), the message has focused on intelligent outreach, not mindless, clueless pitching. If you read my blog and listened to my podcast, you’d know that it’s unfair to suggest that I don’t look internally. It’s in fact something of a litany on my part to make the case against PR spam.
At the end of the day, though, advocacy is the only tool available. The profession can’t “get rid” of anybody.
This is exactly the same situation I faced in the mid-1970s when I was receiving exactly the same flood of brainless pitches in the form of press releases and pitches delivered by the Post Office. I could easily fill a large trash can in a single morning going through that mail.
As I noted in my post, it’s the same in virtually other line of work, just more visible in the world of PR.
I can assure you that the associations, leaders, and others will continue to push for the adoption of the very best practices in reaching out to people like you. As I said, if you have an idea about how to “get rid” of those who just don’t care, I’d love to hear it.
Finally, I don’t believe I’ve ever sent you a crappy pitch, probably because I’ve never pitched you at all. If memory serves, I’ve never had a client whose story would have been of any interest to you.
Posted by Shel Holtz on 04/07 at 01:19 PMShel,
I think the last line in your comment may sum things up beautifully. It’s not just that most PR people send out crap, it’s that they don’t take the time to match the pitch to the journalist/blogger/influencer/whatever.
I also don’t think this is entirely our fault. Sometimes we’re playing a numbers game with ever shrinking numbers. While most of us know that we need to help our clients produce good content in addition to pushing their story to the journalists, the clients would often rather see their name in “lights.” Since the number of journalists is ever-shrinking, this means hitting more people in less time to see the desired results.
That can often lead to bad pitching. It’s not an excuse, just the current trend.
Posted by Chuck Tanowitz on 04/08 at 03:07 AMwhose story would have been of any interest to you.
Scoble rants notwithstanding, but that’s the high art of such, making people normally not interested, interested…finding some common linked tie-in. Anyone can target people already prior interested, and it seems anyone and everyone does. If I am covering a TV/Film beat, find a way to pitch me Enterprise software, by saying so and so TV Show is using it to do such and such. Then suddenly I care. See?
Posted by Christopher Coulter on 04/09 at 01:17 PMThe way you continually repeat his name, Robert, is a bit overdone and silly. While it may look good in a 7th great communications textbook, it just stunts the writing. lighten up a bit.
Posted by johnny on 04/10 at 02:15 PM@johnny 7th great?
Posted by Shel on 04/10 at 07:36 PMI’m a working freelance journalist, both blogging an in print, and used to work in marketing years ago. I prefer email pitches because I don’t like paper. But a good 90 to 95 percent of them are atrocious and immediately suffer deletion. I almost never find something of value in a pitch because they are so rarely put together in a useful way. Here are some suggestions:
1) Write no more than a paragraph. If you can’t get the basic idea across in that space, you either write badly or, more likely, don’t understand what you’re pitching. A journalist can always ask for more information. This also keeps a pitch from droning on.
2) Try to put yourself in the journalist’s shoes and consider what is actually newsworth, not what the client thinks is newsworthy. You work for the client, but you have to interest the reporter. If you don’t have an angle that I would actually consider as a story - an angle that focused on how I write and what my readers are looking for - then you’re wasting your time and mine. For me, at least, an effective news hook is almost never “my client wants to announce something.” Like any good marketing, it has to be all about the audience, not the sponsor.
3) Cut the buzzwords. They are unnecessary.
4) Only pitch when there’s something to pitch. Don’t try to create new reasons to write a release and distribute it so you can bill more.
5) Don’t send big attachments without asking first.
6) If you write a release, use the old inverted pyramid construction from traditional newspaper and wire reporting. First graph has the basic news. Additonal graphs expand it. Don’t try to come up with an enticing lead and leave the journalist in suspense for several graphs. I can’t tell you how many times I trash releases because someone is making me spend my time teasing out what is essentially a sales pitch.
7) Never call me unless you know me particularly well and I’ve said it’s OK. Don’t send me a tweet, don’t send surface mail (unless I know you and said it’s OK) - just a single graph in an email.
8) If you’re sending something cold, simply don’t expect a response. I always respond when I’ve got a pitch out on Profnet or HARO, but don’t have to time to compose answers to all the pitches that I *haven’t* asked for.
Hope someone out there finds this useful.
Posted by Erik Sherman on 04/14 at 02:25 PMErik. That’s a wonderful comment. I wish I’d been as constructive. Hats off to you.
And, if anyone doubts Erik’s words, I back them 100 percent.
(I was a journalist for 30 years and ran media skills training courses for 20 of them)
Posted by David Tebbutt on 04/14 at 08:38 PM