There’s an old joke among journalists: “It’s okay. If I lose my job, I’ll just become a public relations flak.” Believe me, every journalist has thought about it more than once, especially when freelance writing wasn’t paying the bills. After all, what company or public relations firm wouldn’t want a former journalist on the payroll communicating to the media? This point was driven home when I recently attempted to email a journalist friend. To my surprise, I couldn’t track him down. And guess where he turned up. (Read more…)

If you want your press release to get an editor’s attention, you need to get to the point as quickly as possible. Dozens of press releases stream into a newsroom every day. Most of them end up in the trash because an editor simply didn’t have time to read through the whole release to grasp the writer’s point. (Read more…)

After recent conversations with public relations professionals, journalists and others in the business world, I’ve identified the five trends that people say will help you get the ink you’ve been looking for - or that will help you better understand how the ground under public relations continues to shift. (Read more…)

A press release is not an advertisement. A press release is a subtle piece of advertorial: a combination of advertising and editorial content. The point of advertising is to bring a product, service, or cause to the attention of a consumer, voter, volunteer, or contributor. It involves matching the right content with the right audience. A press release is in one sense an advertisement, but in this case your audience is the media. You’re selling them an idea for a story instead of a product or service, though, and it’s crucial you understand what journalists don’t want to hear. (Read more…)

The looming launch of the Fox Business News channel should be a boon for anyone who wants to get on financial television. CNBC will now have a major competitor, and Bloomberg TV may have to rethink its strategy in order to compete. (Read more…)

I haven’t dipped into the mailbag lately, so I thought it was a good time to do some spring cleaning by responding to some letters and sweeping up some odds & ends. (Read more…)

An amazing event is taking place online and it’s one that could help reshape how we think about public relations. The Global PR Blog Week 1.0 is what it’s called and it bills itself as “an online event that will engage PR, marketing and business bloggers from around the globe in a discussion about blogging and communications.” In a nutshell, some of the most intriguing PR and marketing minds from around the world have been brought together to discuss the online world and how it applies to the business of marketing and public relations. (Read more…)