The rules for media relations success – even with an uncertain economy, and even with a changing media scene – are so simple that they bear repeating.
TARGET your media.
TARGET your journalists.
TARGET your pitch.
TARGET how you can become an ongoing resource for the media, rather than a pain-in-the-butt nuisance.
PR folks who specialize in pushing a button and sending out the same release to hundreds of media (no matter the recipients’ demographics or editorial slant) may one day go the way of the dinosaur. “Output” artists who just throw a bunch of releases against the wall and hope that some of them stick may no longer be welcome in journalists’ inboxes.
There are less journalists to “pitch” these days, of course, and more of them doing the jobs of two people. Recently a good friend of mine was laid off after 22 years as an Editor at a major daily. A few months earlier, he had joked that there were so few people left in the newsroom that you could probably roll a bowling ball across it and not hit anyone.
In this new world, if we don’t help journalists do their job, they’re not going to help us do ours! And if that becomes the case, our own offices may one day look like some newsrooms do today – with a lot of empty desks.