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Half Journalists Blacklist PRs

An online survey has revealed that the relationship between the PR industry and the journalist community is more strained than many had thought. Tim Hoang - part of the team that carried out the survey - reports.

PR execs and journalists have always uncomfortably co-existed - with both parties believing that the other makes their daily lives more difficult. This was brought to a head when Chris Anderson, editor of Wired decided to publish on his blog, The Long Tail, a list of "lazy flacks" who had pitched him an irrelevant story - much to the dismay of some and to the amusement of others. The post sent shockwaves around both industries and created a heated discussion between the two factions. However, this was the opinion and action of only one, admittedly very influential, journalist.

The online Rainier PR survey about spam pitching was, rather ironically, spammed to UK journalists who reported on a variety of different sectors. Over a period of 48 hours, 180 journalists filled out the questionnaire and the results should be a wake up call for the PR industry.

Journalists are becoming ‘fed up’ with PR execs and are now actively acting upon it. More than two in five UK journalists (43 per cent) disclosed that they had blacklisted a PR person for pitching a story that was not relevant to the journalist and/or their publication.

It was also revealed that 37 per cent of journalist felt that less than one in 10 press releases or pitches were relevant to their publication. "90 per cent of the PR I receive poor, I just don’t bother with anything that doesn’t have a subject line that interests me," said one anonymous respondent.

Rainier MD Stephen Waddington believes that an over-use of email is causing irreparable damage to the PR industry’s image and reputation. He urged the industry to seriously consider the long term consequences of pitching irrelevant stories.

"Bad PR techniques have always had the capacity to wind up journalists to the extent that they refuse to deal with them. The difference now is that some PR fools are causing irreparable harm to press relationships because email - and over-reliance on it for pitching - means it’s simple to blacklist a bad PR person," said Waddington.

Many journalists bemoaned the number of grammatical and spelling errors in releases, while some underlined the PR industry’s frequent carelessness and  lack of professionalism. "Any press releases that include words like ‘amazing’, ‘leading’, ‘the UK’s most innovative’ etc or - as happened last week - one that includes "(STEVE, WE’VE GOT TO ADD NAMES OF THREE COMPANIES HERE; NOT SURE IF INNOCENT SMOOTHIES WANT TO BE INCLUDED IN THIS) [could lead to blacklisting]," said another anonymous contributor.

Chris Green, editor of UK IT publication, ITPro was not surprised with the results and believes that the situation has never been as bad.

"I’m not surprised sadly. As important as it is for the PR community and journalists to work hand in hand, the fact is that a small, but growing number of agencies and in-house PR’s are either being lazy or incompetent, abusing the relationship and annoying journalists by sending them poorly targeted crap, and failing to do even the most basic research into what the journalist covers, their deadlines and press days etc," said Green.

"Journalists are carrying bigger workloads than ever before, thus they simply don’t have the time to waste processing all the unwanted and unnecessary material being thrown at them. Blacklisting the worst offenders and those who don’t listen, are inconsiderate and rude, or just take the piss is a brutal, but effective way of sorting the worthy from the worthless."

However, Green was keen not to point the finger solely at the PR industry but urged PR execs to push back on clients or risk losing the trust of journalists altogether.

"We know that clients are being more demanding and more stupid when it comes to press relations and communications, particularly American clients who continue to ignore the fact that journalists in the UK are not like their counterparts in the US, who will regurgitate any old crap press release stuck in front of them like a mindless drone. However, agencies also need to do more to educate clients and need to push back more often and harder when faced with a client demand that they know full well will only succeed in alienating the very journalists they are trying to reach."

The advent of social media, blogging and citizen journalism will prove to be an interesting development for both professions, with PR officers having to adapt to this changing situation. Waddington underlined the fact that journalists are now more likely to pull stories from sources rather than have it pushed at them, completely making the role of the PR industry redundant unless it evolves.

"Blogging and citizen journalism have only augmented the issue, with journalists having more story sources than ever. Unless PRs can deliver the content in the right way and are honest about its likely newsworthiness, this survey spells goodnight to anyone prone to flakey pitching," he said.