How to Pitch a Journalist Successfully

I'm not sure how helpful this article really is .... as a journalist, i'll tell you what press releases are very often used for: trashcan filler, or deskfiller to make it look like you've got too much work on your hands (ok that last bit is a little bit of an exaggeration).

This is the most handy piece of info in there: >>Finally, don’t hound the journalists. After your initial pitch, following up once or twice is fine—but any more than that and you’re approaching stalker territory. If you don’t hear anything after the first two calls, move on.

The right approach is to look at pitching a journalist as if you are looking to get hired by a company, and he/she is the hiring manager. Journos get shittons of press releases a day. You have to stand out head and shoulders above the crowd. And there has to be something /useful/ to the publication's readers about your product. You say you've got a great new e-pub app that will make it helpful to publish books electronically? That's not really that useful to readers .. there are tons of those around. What is /special/ about your product to a pub's readership? Find someone in the paper's coverage area who was a raging success story and who used your app/product. That'll be more likely to get a journo's attention.