{You’re gonna love this next guest post. Her Nashville magazine editor Ashley Haugen offers up three ways to improve your PR pitches. And if anyone should know what works, it’s someone on the receiving end.}

As editor of Her Nashville magazine, and having served as editor at several publications over the past 12 years, I’ve received more than my fair share of PR pitches, for better and for worse. My experience on the receiving end has taught me this: I could probably do a bang-up job at getting through to the editors that a lot of PR folks can’t seem to reach. Why? Because I know what works and what doesn’t from this side of the desk. Here are three tips that may prove (more) effective in getting your pitch not only heard but publicized.

Know Who You’re Pitching
Nothing says “I don’t really care about this product/company/person I’m wasting your time telling you about” than an inappropriate pitch. I receive upwards of 50 pitches a week, and I can weed out the good from the bad pretty quickly based solely on the press release title or topic. For instance, if you’re pitching me — the editor of a local women’s publication — on a men’s conference in Seattle, odds are you a) didn’t do your homework, or b) are doing a blanket pitch to anything with a media pulse. Either way, you’ve lost me. When you’re trying to sell me on your subject, tailor your pitch to my outlet; your hard work will pay off. Read More…

The Gray Lady wants to charge folks to partake of her online work; you know, because she likes having a staff, a budget and paying rent.

We live in a world that loves now and expects free.  I admit to fueling that fire, but we get what we pay for. I’m tired of shoddy reporting–I’ll not call it journalism. It’s not that reporters want to write poorly or get stuff wrong–no one enjoys being factually incorrect. It’s that there are like three people left in America’s collective newsrooms. With one part-time copy editor.

A newspaper can’t do amazing stuff like this, or make folks cry like this, without experienced journalists and a budget.

For some reason, we want to be paid for our own talents and services, but can’t seem to wrap our heads around why newspapers would require–or even desire–compensation. It blows my mind.

So, newspapers of the world: charge me. I’ll pay it in a heartbeat if it helps reinstate a well-stocked newsroom, thoughtful editorials, heart-pounding investigative work and a fact-checker or two. I admire The New York Time‘s move and hope other papers follow suit posthaste.

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I’ve subscribed to the Bad Pitch Blog and the like for years. I even had a (nervous) laugh when the flack spammer wiki came out. I read these online offerings because they teach sound lessons on what not to do, BUT this is just public humiliation for humiliation’s sake.  It’s getting old and pissing me off.

Here’s the thing, blog ranters: WE DON’T CARE about how many bad pitches you get a day or how much you hate pr people who suck at their jobs. We really don’t. Why? Because every profession has bad apples. Including journalism. And blogging. But I can think of about 107 things I’d rather/need to be doing than wasting my time ranting about poor journalists/bloggers when there are plenty of great ones out there I need to be getting to know. I guess you ranters just don’t have that much to do?

More importantly, I don’t think that I’m such a flippin big deal that people who aren’t good at their jobs no longer have the right to talk to me. Even if the conversation is irrelevant to my gig.  It’s called a delete button. Push it.

Yes, it’s fun(ny) for journalists/bloggers to hold up a PR flack’s mistake under the fluorescent lamp of the Internet and giggle. Especially at the flacks who lack a lick of common sense, bless ‘em. But if you’re commentary isn’t doling out something constructive for your readers — other than the fact that you hate pr people — please don’t bother. Arrogance is not your color.

Chris Brogan took a field trip to Gannett (USA Today et al) and offers up an insightful report card on the big media umbrella (ella, ella).

Unlike most bloggers out there, Brogan isn’t screaming bring out yer dead. His post is a narrative of social media guru humility and realism. Quite refreshing:

I never presume that companies ???don???t get it,??? at least not the companies kind enough to indulge my visits, and seek out what I think might come next. But I guess I do still have some bias around what I perceived would be the level-set of people inside a big news organization like Gannett.

I need to keep myself open to the perspective that these big companies ???get it??? just fine, and that my role is to help further augment their visions with my industry learnings and implementation guidance, instead of thinking that I???m going to bring fire to the natives every time.

Sure, not every company gets it, and yes, every company has different views of how this will all go, but with my eyes opened by all the bright minds I encountered in my long day at Gannett, I feel that I???m going to presume that there are voices and minds inside who see the future just as clearly as you or me, and I???m going to listen better.

It’s great to hear someone, especially Chris Brogan, give these mammoth media peeps a little credit for their effort to evolve into a real digital media contributor. Sure, some of their efforts might come across as social media for social media’s sake. But there are plenty of PR efforts and corporate accounts of which we could say the same.

I never thought I’d see the day when our largest daily had a Twitter account. They even have a staff videographer. No matter what happens to print big guns in the end, I’m thrilled that they are at least giving digital information sharing the old college try.

Apparently, I’m supposed to cringe at the word “flack” as used to describe PR professionals like me. But, um, instead I kinda named my website after the term. Sorry!

From the PR News blog:

Technically, most dictionaries will refer to flack as a press agent/spokesperson. But we all know it’s not the preferred name for a spokesperson, for a communicator, for a PR executive. Yet it’s used all the time.  Whether behind your back or to your face…

…it’s a sad story — or a sad state of affairs — any time bona fide PR professionals (and I am assuming the PR dept at AIG is legit) are referred to as “flacks.”

Okay, true. It’s not my preferred name, but the use of the term flack is not the least bit offensive to me. Furthermore, I’ve had many a journalist and PR pro ask me what the word means, as they have never before heard it used to describe a communicator or spokesperson.

Now, I do agree with the blogger on several points. The NY Post was being less than professional and showing complete bias by recently referring to a spokesperson as a “flak.” I would roll my eyes if I was quoted that way, especially if it was spelled incorrectly like that.

But the bottom line is this:

The NY Post’s printed flack attack only speaks to the complete lack of trust the reporter has in that spokesperson. This is not something that can be prevented by one good response to a question. A solid media/flack relationship develops over time and boils down to how much respect you’ve earned (and keep) as a PR professional.

It’s that deteriorated media relationship, not word choice, that is so troublesome.