Wednesday, March 25, 2020

Ethical Wins: Navigating Media Relations in a Pandemic


In this time of uncertainty over the Covid-19 pandemic, the seriousness of the issue presents a variety of social, economic, and health challenges for all of us.

While practicing “social distancing,” many of us are often glued to news services, looking for the latest updates, valuable survival tips, words of wisdom, and glimmers of hope. For me, as media relations professional, it presents some distinct challenges both functionally – that is, the success of my ability to pitch media and earn placements – and ethically, since I’m a person with a social obligation to my peers.

I want to offer some tips to navigate a unique media landscape where only one story is on everyone’s mind. Now, more than ever, all of us in marketing and public relations must think about everything we’re doing before we do it.




Wednesday, December 18, 2019

The Basics of Healthy, Happy Relationships


Building relationships with journalists takes time. Smashing them to pieces takes little time at all.

One terrible, irrelevant pitch and you could end up on a journalist’s blacklist – and that isn’t where you want to be. Because as any good media relations guru will tell you, we need journalists more than they need us.

To build strong relationships – and maybe fix bad ones – there are some basic rules of the road anyone out there sending pitches should follow, lest you end up in the SPAM folder – where email goes to die!




Wednesday, January 23, 2019

Guidelines for a Darn Good Press Release Headline



Editors and journalists get a ridiculous number of press releases in their inbox every day. It isn’t just this week’s news that a press release completes with – it’s releases from prior weeks, being re-sent and re-packaged to find new coverage. It’s a tough, competitive world for each press release. Even if you have a newsworthy story, getting eyes on it isn’t always easy. For yours to win, you need a great press release headline that grabs attention, tells a complete story, and makes a reader want to know more.


Wednesday, September 12, 2018

Embrace the Paywall Future – Because it’s Coming


For several years now we all have lived in luxury, enjoying free content on the Internet that’s paid for through ads and data mining, with no paywall to contend with. But, as many prominent media outlets have noted, things are beginning to change.