Meet the Press

Wow. This has been a bad week for lazy PR people who insist on using mail merge as a communications strategy.

Aaron Brazell, from Technosailor, outed a particularly clueless pitch from Guerilla PR.

Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief of Wired Magazine, was so fed up with unsolicited pr emails that he decided to publish a list of email addresses that had sent him an irrelevant press release in the last 30 days. Ironically, those published emails address will surely be harvested by spammers.

Entry level pr people are often asked to shoulder most of this media list building and outreach. What happened this week is a reminder to do your homework and to never just blast editors and reporters with what is essentially spam.

Rather, get to know your sources, what they cover, and demonstrate your familiarity with a pitch that's tailored specifically for the journalist you have in mind. Having trouble finding the connection between your idea and their beat? Then move on and research a different reporter, or perhaps that outlet isn't suited at all.

Maybe the only good to come of this is the robust debate taking place on the blogs and comments section. The Anderson posting resulted in over 70 comments in less than 48 hours.