There’s no way to get a good, rich, nuanced story from a rushed interview, so an invitation to just “drop by for five minutes to chat,” really doesn’t play.
See, the idea of good reporting is to have more information on the story topic than you need to write it up, and to cherry-pick from all that knowledge things to put into the story. Sometimes people write articles with less information than they need to paint a complete picture. It shows.
Filed under Reporting
It’s April Fools’ day, otherwise known as the worst day to be a tech journalist. Every other pitch is a lame attempt at humor. Maybe one out of 50 is halfway funny. I don’t want to complain too much, though. It’s like open-mic night at the comedy club. We all know what we’re in for today.
The problem is that the real pitches are blended in with the fake ones, and sometimes it’s sadly hard to tell the difference. Especially when non-joke pitches have April-Foolish headlines like “This is no joke…”
Look, we’re just confused. If you have a real pitch, have a heart, save it for the next day. Thanks.
Oh, but then there’s this: A joke that should be real. (See TV industry turns blind eye to non-3D viewers.)
Read more: CNET’s directory of foolishness, 2011.
Filed under Compassion
As much as I like hearing from the people who make products directly, if you can’t use nice words, have your babysitter — sorry, I mean PR person — contact me instead.
Rafe,
I’ve been assuming that you didn’t cover the email industry because I sent you emails about [our product] with no response. Now I just read your article touting [other products] while ignoring [my product] completely. [etc...]
Do you also report on [this other field]? Our mother company has a better [thing in that field] than [competitors]. I hope that you won’t write a big article about [the other field] that touts only [competitors] as if we never existed.
Please take notice.
It is true that the author of this e-mail, Kvetch McCranklestein (not his real name), did have a point. I glossed over e-mails he sent me in the past and didn’t cover his product. But this is so not the way to make things right when that happens. And it happens all the time. The thing is, even when you’re wronged by the press, it’s rarely in your interest to be snippy with a writer. Remember what your strategic goal is: To get known and then covered by someone who’s disposed to like your product. When you complain like this, you just give writers reasons to look for excuses to not cover you.
In the case of McCranklestein, I actually e-mailed him back, at first admonishing him for his tone. We eventually had a civil and forthright e-mail conversation about how things like this happen. It felt pretty positive.
But I still haven’t covered the product.
Filed under Common sense, Email
When you reach a reporter on the phone, turn on your energy. Smile. You’re selling something, remember? Act like it. Don’t be a downer.
Also, take the gum out of your mouth, don’t make a PR call from a mobile phone, get to the point, etc. Reporters’ ears are highly attuned to tone and effort. When you’re phoning it in, we tune it out.
Filed under Common sense
Avoid carpet-bombing your press releases. That is, sending the same release to everyone in a newsroom. It just creates problems.
First, it makes you look cheap. If you don’t know who to send information to, sending it to everyone is not a good alternative. Do your homework.
And of course, reporters know when a release is carpet-bombed. We carpet-bomb our newsrooms ourselves when we get information that we want someone else to grab but that’s not important to assign to a particular person immediately. But when everyone gets the same release, you end up with multiple internal carpet-bombings. Any impression that the information is precious and worth jumping on is wiped out.
You dilute effectiveness when you don’t focus.
Filed under Common sense, Email
If the pitch makes you want to wash yourself after writing it, don’t send it.
Filed under Bad ideas
A CES tip: Don’t invite me to your daytime press conference and not to your big evening party. What, you thought I didn’t know about the party? I know.
Filed under Relationships
If you want someone to actually wear your company’s swag T-shirt, donate it to a Salvation Army or give it to a homeless person.
I already have a ton of vendor T-shirts that I’ll never wear, clothing for a lifetime of painting projects I’ll never get to. While I appreciate the offer of the T-shirt advertising your company or product, I’d feel better knowing it was going to someone who could really use it.
Happy holidays!
Filed under Compassion
You know when you see a preview for a movie, and then later you go see the movie, and it’s nothing like the preview? You know how annoying that is?
Don’t do that with your product.
Especially don’t have a demo video on your Web service with a concrete example of how your product works that can be instantly verified by a casual visitor to be completely different from how your product behaves for real.
At left, a frame from the demo video hosted on the product's home page, showing the "power words" you get when you search for "House pet." At right, the power words you actually get.
Filed under Common sense
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Rafe