What To Do First: Email or Phone Call?

I was taught to always pick up the phone and call a reporter because it's more personal. More veteran (older) PR supervisors wanted me to do the same when I mentioned I was going to email a journalist. Picking up and dialing the phone was how so many PR - Reporter/Journalist relationships were built for many years. But now in 2011, is it better to send an email when reaching out to a reporter/journalist?

It will always depend on the reporter or journalist in question. You might be contacting a reporter who is 75 years old and hates email. Obviously a phone call is better in that case. But how many times have you as a PR professional unknowingly called a reporter who was on a tight deadline to pitch a story? Do you remember how annoyed they were when you called?

This topic was discussed in an ABA Journal article that also had responses to the question.

I'm a big proponent of emailing a reporter first because you give them a chance to read your pitch on their time, one that is good for them. If you do not get a response back, then follow up with a phone call. But maybe first contact doesn't have even have to be through traditional email: You can use Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter if you know how to use it correctly.

The main thing is know how the reporter/journalist wants to be contacted. At first you might not know how. There are websites and programs that try to provide this information for the price of their subscription fee. But you can also try contacting their news desk and ask if they know how.

For me, it usually email first. Times have changed and PR professionals have to change their communications habits as well.

How Stressful Are PR Jobs?

An article on Yahoo! Finance discussed a report that named "Public Relations Executive" as the second most stressful job in America. It feel right behind "Commercial Airline Pilot" and right above "Senior Corporate Executive". The author of the original report cited his main reason as: "Public relations executives are "completely at the mercy of their clients and buyers." I really don't buy it.

A PR job can certainly be stressful, but just as much as any other job. I believe PR jobs are only stressful if your no confident in your ability to connect with people. The success rate for PR professionals are similar to bating averages in baseball: It's a given that you're going to fail more times then succeed when pitching stories and you can succeed less then three out of 10 times and still be great at what you do.

It's how you handle your successes along with your failures internally that will decided how stressful your PR job will be. And that can be said for every job.

The Misconceptions of the PR

If you’re a Public Relations professional that has ever worked for a private business or organization, you’ve most likely run into the problem of co-workers having no idea what public relations really is. It can come from an executive or an entry-level employee and it mostly like contained the phrase: “Can’t the PR department just do that?”

The art of public relations has been around since the beginning of time – the ancient Greeks and Romans were masterfully skilled at it. But the industry has been given a glamorous (please forgive me) spin in the past 10-to-20 years with TV shows and movies showing public relations professionals sipping martinis with music stars in limos. On his website, Jackson Wightman put together a list of 21 things PR is not and I agree with almost all his points.

My favorite not-to-dos on his list are No. 5 and 6: (Never) Ever guaranteed to generate coverage and (PR is never) Ever 100% controllable.

Just having a story or brand to pitch isn’t enough anymore, even for the best practitioners. It has to be interesting to people who have no attachment to the product. Often, CEO’s/Presidents/Executives think that everyone loves their product and story and have no reason not to and if journalists don’t pick it up, then it’s the PR departments fault. Well, it actually can just be the brand is boring in it’s current state and/or form.

As for No. 6, unless something unethical is going on between the public relations team and the media, chances are a bad story won’t just go away. A good PR professional can share the company’s standpoint and try to show the journalist their side of the equation. But once a journalist decides to run with a story, chances are it will be published. Only in rare instances can a PR pro make a deal to sweep one story under the carpet because they can offer up a bigger story in return in the not-to-distant future.

I would also add a No. 22 to the list: Easy.

Public Relations is not something that anyone can just start doing. I went to college specifically for a degree in public relations. In the last 10-to-15 years, more and more universities are offering specific degrees in public relations as opposed to a blanket degree in mass media and journalism for those who want to go into the industry. A marketing degree might help, but you would still be missing a lot. A degree in finance or pre-law? No thank you. Just because you watched the Sex and the City series or the movie Thank You For Smoking doesn’t make you an expert in public relations.

Public Relations is a lot of things. A lot of good things. But for some reason, as an industry, public relations professionals haven't pitched what their work really is effectively to the outside world. Misconceptions will only continue until we do.

LINK: Perfect PR Pitches

As a guest writer for Ragen's PR Daily, New York Times tech columnist David Pogue shared his thoughts on what constitutes a good story pitch from PR professionals. (Click here to view)


The only way for PR professionals to know how effective they are at pitching is not necessarily to see how often their pitches get picked up by the media, rather to directly ask the journalists they are pitching. Sometimes a PR professional can throw the perfect pitch, but the journalist just doesn't have the time, space or ability to commit to the story. 


But as Pogue illustrates from a journalist's point of view, there is a need for pitches to be unique and have newsworthy elements. Just because you think your pitch relates to something that will interest the general public, doesn't mean it will interest the media. PR professionals have to assume that the journalists they are pitching have been previously contacted about something very similar to what they are trying to sell.

And Pogue is absolutely correct that pitches and press release not only have to be clear and concise, but also unique and interesting.