Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to Pitch a Journalist Successfully

thedailymuse.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 33 posts

Re: How to Pitch a Journalist Successfully

#11

Post by CurtMonash »

This is appalling pabulum. It has no more to do with pitching a journalist successfully than wearing nice clothing to the interview has to do with getting a job.

Every pitch should have dual goals:

1. Ideally, you'd like to get covered. 2. Absent that, you'd like to increase the likelihood of getting covered in the future.

So you should think of your pitch as being more about making your company look worth writing about. In particular, don't breathlessly oversell a minor piece of news.

If you're a native English speaker, you should strongly consider going without a PR firm altogether. They're the sort of outfit who follow the cookie-cutter advice in the post linked here and think they're adding value. They also are very bad, with few exceptions, at finding credible ways to make you sound unique.

Re: How to Pitch a Journalist Successfully

#12

Post by CurtMonash »

CurtMonash wrote: post #11

This is appalling pabulum. It has no more to do with pitching a journalist successfully than wearing nice clothing to the interview has to do with getting a job. Every pitch should have dual goals: 1. Ideally, you'd like to get covered. 2. Absent that, you'd like to increase the likelihood of getting covered in the future. So you should think of your pitch as being more about making your company look worth writing ab…

Here's a link with some of the reasons for my opinion:

http://www.strategicmessaging.com/five-kinds-of-public-relat...

(First time I've posted a link to Hacker News. I'm curious to see what happens ...)

Re: How to Pitch a Journalist Successfully

#13

Post by CurtMonash »

jagermo wrote: post #4

few pointers: Never, and I mean, never ever, call a journalist after you sent them your news and ask them if they got your mail and when they will write about it. It's a sure way to get you blacklisted. Target your mail. A tech-blog needs other information than a local newspaper. Set up a page with pictures and link to them. And: Get a professional PR person. You might be good, but if you let your pr be handled by "g…

Your fist paragraph is good. The second one, as stated in my own comment to the main, I vigorously disagree with.

Re: How to Pitch a Journalist Successfully

#14

Post by wiradikusuma »

Asking it here instead of commenting in the blog for more eyeballs:

1. The (only) media covering startups for my target market happens to be funded by the same investor and in the same company group with the startup I'm competing with. How to deal with this?

2. How to deal the case where you get reply from more than one media near simultaneously (after you BCC-spam them). Promising each of them "exclusive info" seems weird right? Should you honestly reply the rest, "Sorry folks, one media already replied."?

Re: How to Pitch a Journalist Successfully

#15

Post by Mz »

CurtMonash wrote: post #12
CurtMonash wrote: post #11

This is appalling pabulum. It has no more to do with pitching a journalist successfully than wearing nice clothing to the interview has to do with getting a job. Every pitch should have dual goals: 1. Ideally, you'd like to get covered. 2. Absent that, you'd like to increase the likelihood of getting covered in the future. So you should think of your pitch as being more about making your company look worth writing ab…

Here's a link with some of the reasons for my opinion: http://www.strategicmessaging.com/five-kinds-of-public-relat... (First time I've posted a link to Hacker News. I'm curious to see what happens ...)

You can do an after action report tomorrow. I would like to see it, especially if it doesn't involve 10k hits. I think only the crazy stuff gets reported and it skews public perception of what it means to post a link here. My links never get anywhere near the traffic that gets reported around here until people seem to think that kind of hype is the norm.

Re: How to Pitch a Journalist Successfully

#16

Post by CurtMonash »

wiradikusuma wrote: post #14

Asking it here instead of commenting in the blog for more eyeballs: 1. The (only) media covering startups for my target market happens to be funded by the same investor and in the same company group with the startup I'm competing with. How to deal with this? 2. How to deal the case where you get reply from more than one media near simultaneously (after you BCC-spam them). Promising each of them "exclusive info" seems…

1. One journalist at a time. Journalists often have very different integrity and biases than their employers.

2. I don't understand why you think you need to offer exclusives at all. So I don't really understand the question.

Re: How to Pitch a Journalist Successfully

#17

Post by ballooney »

derrida wrote: post #7
danielhunt wrote: post #6

Is it just me, or is this title missing a 'to'? How to pitch a journalist - surely I can't be the only one thinking that this contains instructions on how best to throw a journalist 10 meters in any direction... I've noticed this quite a bit in American posts - words clearly missing, but no one cares

The English language is a flexible thing. Some think that "y'all" is not 'proper', but name another single word second person collective pronoun in English. Some English in America also has "write me" instead of "write to me".

I sympathise with Daniel Hunt in my heart though I rationally see where you're coming from. If I were to give a nice blank canvas as a gift to a child and they were to smear excrement all over it, in my gut I'd be annoyed but I could probably be talked around to the idea that it's a valid form of self-expression, even if it's not my cup of tea.

However, saying "I could care less" when you mean "I could not care less". There is no justification for such a heinous crime. Murderers can be rehabilitated, electro-convulsive therapy can take care of all manor of criminal perversions, so save your death penalty for when it is really in the public interest. For the unconvinced, the Guardian newspaper made a little video:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/video/2010/may/20/la...

Re: How to Pitch a Journalist Successfully

#18

Post by Angostura »

jagermo wrote: post #4

few pointers: Never, and I mean, never ever, call a journalist after you sent them your news and ask them if they got your mail and when they will write about it. It's a sure way to get you blacklisted. Target your mail. A tech-blog needs other information than a local newspaper. Set up a page with pictures and link to them. And: Get a professional PR person. You might be good, but if you let your pr be handled by "g…

How about you actually assess how good that 'guy in marketing is'. He/she might have been an agency PR in an earlier life, or perhaps even a journalist.

Re: How to Pitch a Journalist Successfully

#19

Post by Angostura »

wiradikusuma wrote: post #14

Asking it here instead of commenting in the blog for more eyeballs: 1. The (only) media covering startups for my target market happens to be funded by the same investor and in the same company group with the startup I'm competing with. How to deal with this? 2. How to deal the case where you get reply from more than one media near simultaneously (after you BCC-spam them). Promising each of them "exclusive info" seems…

Just kicking the assumptions on point 1 - what's the start-up? what's the target market? What's the media?

Re: How to Pitch a Journalist Successfully

#20

Post by jagermo »

wilfra wrote: post #10
jagermo wrote: post #4

few pointers: Never, and I mean, never ever, call a journalist after you sent them your news and ask them if they got your mail and when they will write about it. It's a sure way to get you blacklisted. Target your mail. A tech-blog needs other information than a local newspaper. Set up a page with pictures and link to them. And: Get a professional PR person. You might be good, but if you let your pr be handled by "g…

Spoken like a true PR person. Telling every bootstrapped startup to get a professional PR person is silly. The whole purpose of articles like this is so that they can make due without one in the beginning.

actually I'm a journalist and i get a lot of mails from marketing people who think they know what journalists want. Most of them do not. I have no interest in superlatives for example. Sure, you don't need one to start, but please, show me one successful startup without a professional PR person.

Edit: I think, companies need to see pr as a tool. Like your other tools. You can write all your code in Notepad. You normally don't.

Post reply on HN