Five Big Don’ts for PR People Pitching the Media

Robert Mullins is a freelance writer in Silicon Valley. His work can be found at his Robert Mullins blog.

I’ve often been invited to speak to people at PR firms on how to deal with the media. In preparation for one recent visit I did a little online research and came across a post to the “Bad Pitch Blog.”

It was titled “Top 10 things you should NEVER say to the media.” I intended it as a fun icebreaker for my presentation to the people at this agency, assuming they already knew this stuff. Surprisingly, or dismayingly, many of them expressed appreciation at my sharing with them this eye-opening guidance. This I take to mean that these guidelines bear repeating.

I’m going to discuss my take on the first five this week and the rest next week.

10. Never say “This is off the record.” “If you don’t want to see it published, you shouldn’t say it in the first place. Does your source know this?” Bad Pitch Blog stated. I got a tip that a famous steakhouse was opening an outlet near a busy shopping mall in San Jose. I called an executive of the restaurant chain who confirmed that for me. Later I heard from the real estate agent who was trying to secure a lease for the restaurant told me that my story killed the deal. Again, tell your client that. To this I would add that you cannot apply “This is off the record” retroactively. Many have tried. While I might retroactively place something off the record, it would depend on the news value of the information versus the value of the source for a bigger story.

9. That isn’t a story. I love this one. Nothing increases the resolve of a reporter to continue pursuing a story than to have someone who’d rather you not do the story tell you it’s not a story. The reporter and editor – and ultimately the readers – determine whether it’s a story.

8. You should do this because your competition did this story in their last issue. When I was a reporter at the Milwaukee Business Journal, a weekly, I received more than a few press kits with clippings of articles from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the local daily, as proof that the client company is worth writing about. Knowing that our readers also likely read the local daily, evidence that the daily already did the story would mitigate against our doing it.

7. Did you get my e-mail, voice mail, etc.? Unless your e-mail to me bounced back to you, I got it. To be sure, there are times when your message gets buried in 100 messages just that morning to the reporter and there have been times when a call prompts me to dig for it and I may be interested. But Bad Pitch Blog suggests you call with something new added to the pitch, like “The CEO is available on Thursday” that freshens it.

6. You don’t cover this beat? Can you forward my pitch to the person who does? Bad Pitch considers it bad form and says the PR person needs to do their homework. It does relate to what I consider the most important thing a PR person should do: Know the publication you’re pitching to. These days, many publications have pages on their Web sites that reveal which beats reporters cover. Check that page to guide your pitch.

Next week: “Top five things you should never tell the media.”