Know Your Journalist, Know Your Audience
September 7th, 2010 by Paula Slotkin
A recent survey sponsored by Bulldog Reporter and Cision 2010 asked 1,729 journalists what irked them about PR folks and what they think we should do differently when pitching our clients and story ideas. You can read the results here (http://img.en25.com/Web/CisionUS/Bulldog-Cision-2010-Journalist-Survey.pdf) but in summary, these journalists all seemed to agree that the key to getting a journalist’s attention is to make the pitch relevant. In order to do that you have to understand the outlet – whether it is online, print or broadcast – it is critical that you should understand from the journalist’s perspective of why this would be relevant to their readers. The survey goes on to note that “More than half of responding journalist complain that emails from communications professionals don’t highlight why readers would care about the subject.”
Everyone is busy – in fact busier than ever before. Over half of the surveyed journalists said that the editorial staff size at their media outlet had decreased over the past 12 months and 74 percent said that their workload had a “marked increase during the same time period.”
And, about us communications people, they said that almost half of the professionals they work with don’t understand the subjects they cover while 27 percent are clueless about the subjects they are pitching. All this points to the fact that we have to do our homework before that first pitch is sent out or that call is placed. We represent our clients and to do so intelligently requires that we all do our homework first, and pitch second. Be creative, tie in with current events and be relevant.
Happy pitching!
This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 7th, 2010 at 10:48 am and is filed under Media Relations, PR, Surveys. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
September 7th, 2010 at 5:05 pm
I totally agree – not only will the reporter be more apt to listen to your pitch, but you’ll be more confident while pitching (both on the phone and in your emails). The problem I see is that doing your homework on a reporter/pub, and doing it well, is time consuming (it seems there’s never anytime between emails, coordinating briefings and all our other work). But it’s putting in the time needed that makes for a thoughtful, well received pitch. Maybe every thoughtful pitch won’t be a home run, but it certainly makes for good habits and for success in the future.