Joanne the Coach

A Slice of How to be a Successful Freelancer

Just wanted to let you know that I have a new series of articles coming up at the Journalism.co.uk site, about how to be a successful freelancer. The first one has just gone up here, and looks at the best way to pitch your ideas to editors. This is a version of a previous post on this blog, now with added modernity including using Twitter to pitch. The original vintage, longer and more detailed post is here.

Blame it on the PRs

I don't mean to keep having a go at PRs, but my goodness, they make it so easy.

On Friday I received an email promoting an event. Lots of other media people got sent it too, including journalists from The Times, Grazia and the BBC. How do I know this? Well, all the recipients' email addresses were left visible in the 'To' field of the message. I started counting how many people had had their contact details exposed in this way, and kind of wished I hadn't, because it came to 294. Come on dudes, even I know how to use the bcc field, and I'm a techno-neanderthal.

Aside from the privacy issues, if you are sending an email to this many people at once, you stand a higher chance of getting tangled up in spam filters. Since ticket sales from this event are raising funds for a charity for people with cancer, I would have thought that the aim was to make it more, not less, likely that media would hear about it. Am I missing something here?

Things I Don't Understand About PRs

So as promised below, I wanted to let you know the good parts of my journalistic communications with the PR dudes. Here you go:

{cavernous echo}

Only joking. Seriously, over all it's been good. When I sent out requests on Response Source, Gorkana and the 4Media group, I was slightly hoping to get replies that included something extra daft to chuckle about. These free services exist to connect journalists with a wide range of PRs and their wares. But many of the journalists I know talk about them in quite derisory terms, swapping stories about the time they asked for information about penile implants, and got a press release for a product that washes your vavoova instead.

Alas, I didn't get anything all that random, but did get lots of useful information which in turn led to stuff I could write about. I am old enough to remember the days when, if you wanted to contact a bunch of PRs, you just had to grab your contacts book and a phone, get your head down and start dialling. So when used well, these sites can be a great resource on all sides. But there were still some aspects of PRs behaviour I couldn't quite follow.

• The sudden silences
  If you send a press release, and I reply with "Oh yes, I've used those, they're great - send more info/jpeg pic and I'll write about it" that's not a trick response. I'm not taking the piss. And it's certainly not a cue for you to go silent and never get in touch again.
• I only said hello, no need to propose
  Just because I asked for press releases on parenting stuff, doesn't make it a good idea to put me on a mailing list for everything you ever represented. I have enough trouble keeping track of info on stuff I'm interested in, I just don't have the brain space for all the rest as well.
• The terrier-like persistence, even though the plot has moved on considerably
  Our friends, The Bunnies in the Mirror, still rang me up to see if I was coming to their event. Twice.
• Why so coy? You're promoting this stuff, right?
  A large proportion of PRs who replied to my request simply hit 'Reply' and didn't bother to put anything in the subject matter about what they were promoting. Still more simply put "For ParentDish" in the subject line. I do keep press releases that I don't use straight away, and I do look back over them. But when you have a dozen with the same subject matter, it's hard to see the wood for the trees. It's a simple thing, but you'll make yourself stand out in a journalist's inbox if you say what it is you're offering in the subject line.
• Why phone people who don't want to be phoned?
  I was very careful to leave my phone number off my media requests, for the simple reason that I prefer to be contacted by email. This is practical as much as anything else, as I am often coaching by phone for an hour at a time, so if you call you won't get me. And if you do, I'm probably just a teensy bit busy. If you pitch by phone I'm less, not more, likely to listen.
• The messages that make no sense or are just plain wrong
  Some of the messages I received simply made no sense at all - they were just fragments of phrases that had been cut and pasted a little too often. And saying "This is for your new health site" when it's not a health site, won't turn it into one just because you have a health product to promote.

So aside from all that, if you are PR-ing for something in the parenting/family line, yes I do want to hear about it. But dudes, none of the above please.

Name and shame?

Several people have said that I should name the PR firm referred to in the smashed mirror debacle. But though I'm not shy of calling a turd a turd, I've decided not to in this case. The reason being that if you point the finger at somebody else, then it becomes solely about them. And I think the point here about lack of attention to detail, and the consequences to that, is much wider, and one we could all do with paying attention to.

But I did email the company involved, politely pointing out what had happened and not once using the phrase "you useless feckers, why in billy blazes did you do this?". I think you can tell a lot about a company according how they respond when things have gone wrong, and this is a PR firm which has won 9 awards for excellence in the last year. This was their emailed response:

Please accept our sincere apologies for the broken mirror and any injury caused to your daughter. We are currently speaking with our suppliers on the delivery mechanism of the invites and will be taking this matter up with them.

What do you think of that? Sincere apology or a bit muted? I wonder what this mysterious "delivery mechanism" is? I hope they don't put it to work organising a piss up in a brewery.

And daughterino's foot is fine now. We are soon to launch ourselves on a joint journalistic mission of sweet testing. I think she's learning that sweet and sour is the name of the media game. 

Take Care of the Little Things (and Don't try to Maim my Children)

Picture the scene: It's Saturday morning, my son's 6th birthday. The postman brings a brightly coloured padded envelope, and we gather round to open it. I give it a shake - it rattles. Maybe some Lego from Granny? A few Star Wars figures?

I tip it open and it's a pile of broken glass. The kids and the cat jump back in alarm, but my daughter still manages to cut her foot on a shard.

So what happened was this: a PR firm have sent out invitations to an event, displayed in a mirror frame. They put the frame in some bubblewrap, unsealed. They put the bubblewrap in a jiffy bag, unsecured. So for the want of a couple of pieces of sellotape, instead of making a good impression of the company running the event, they've left a journalist (meself) thinking "Jesus Christ, what idiot did this?"

Since I've been writing for ParentDish I've had much more contact with PRs than ever before, and on the whole my experience has been good, unlike some of my colleagues elsewhere. But it's the little things that make a big difference. Like the PRs who phone up, even though I don't put my phone number on media requests and specifically ask to be contacted by email. Like the people who say "Hi, we've spoken before" even though I know we never have. Like the ones who send a PDF when you ask for a jpeg.

I will be posting about the good PR practice I've encountered soon, but till then, take care of the little details. And please don't send me broken glass again.