Here’s the next instalment of my series of occasional posts about the PR tips and advice that journalists share on LinkedIn and other socials. After all, who else is better qualified to tell us PRs what we’re doing wrong (and right) than the journos we’re pitching to?
1) Try pitching Sunday for Monday
To kick things off, Steph Spyro, deputy politics and environment editor at the Daily Express, reminds public relations professionals below about the under used tactic of pitching stories to national news site editorial desks on a Sunday for publication on the Monday. Why? Because, as Steph explains, there’s a ‘natural lull’ on Sunday’s as fewer organisations put news out on the day. There are also usually fewer journalists working the Sunday shift, so your story is likely to get a bit more consideration.
Strictly speaking, if you want to pitch Sunday for Monday, you’re actually probably better off pitching it on a Thursday or Friday as Steph suggests. This gives the news team a bit more time to consider your story.
2) Send embargoed stories early
The next PR tip comes from Mary Ann Azevedo, a freelance reporter formerly of TechCrunch. She’s frustrated by PRs sending her embargoed stories with fewer than three days’ notice before the embargo lifts.
One of the main advantages of embargoes for a journalist is that they provide additional time to consider the story, do their research, conduct related interviews and build their angle before the story is widely released. If you don’t give them enough time to do this, then you’re taking away the value of the embargo.
As some of the PRs responding to Mary in comments have suggested, they always plan to provide more time when arranging embargoes. However, those good intentions often fall by the wayside because it takes longer than expected to get the press release approved. Typically, a story that’s worthy of an embargo is a bigger story that requires sign-off from multiple stakeholders (often internal and external), which inevitably causes delays (I’ve been there myself many times).
Nevertheless, it’s the responsibility of the PR team and their client to work together to make the timings work!!
3) Don’t use AI to generate comments
Finally, Chris Stokel-Walker, a freelance journo who writes for The Times and The Economist, stresses in the post below that PRs will be shunned by journalists if they continue to send AI-generated comments and quotes on behalf of clients.
Chris shared the content of a comment he had received, which was very clearly AI-generated – and far below the standard a journalist could be expected to use. When Chris called him out about this, the PR in question apologised and excused himself of blame by claiming it was the client who had prepared the comment.
One of the biggest complaints from journalists right now is about receiving poor-quality AI-generated PR slop. As a PR professional, you have no excuse for not impressing upon your clients that they should absolutely not be using ChatGPT or similar tools to create journalist comments. And anyway, you should always review your clients’ comments before passing them on to a journalist. After all, it’s your reputation with the journalist that is also on the line.
Photo by Houcine Ncib on Unsplash