PRESS RELATIONS
Public relations can't function without the
press. PR professionals spend most of their day maintaining existing
relationships and cultivating new ones with journalists and other members of
the mass media. Journalists are bombarded with press releases -- the Los Angeles
Times receives hundreds a week. Reporters are most likely to pay
attention to those from a trusted source.
For a PR person to win that trust, he issues
press releases targeted to the journalist's "beat," or expertise.
Press releases should read like actual stories, not just bullet points
extolling the client's virtues. There has to be something truly newsworthy
about the release or it will be ignored.
Technically, journalists don't need
press releases and PR contacts to do their jobs, but it can make the task of
filling a daily newspaper or nightly news broadcast much easier. A well-written
press release with a real news hook can translate directly into a story, saving
a journalist valuable time tracking down sources and assembling facts.
In a perfect PR world, clients never make
mistakes and the press never asks for information that isn't on the official
statement. But when the media comes calling, PR departments and publicists are
the first line of defense.
It's a hard fact of life for the PR professional.
You crave media attention when the news is good and flee from the spotlight
when things go bad. As we discussed earlier, a good PR department will have a
plan in place and a skilled spokesman on hand to make sure that the press hears
something other than the classic "No comment."
If a client feels a newspaper is misrepresenting
the facts, the PR professional does have some weapons in his arsenal. One
option is to write an Op-Ed piece telling the client's side of the story and
submit it to the newspaper for publication.
If the newspaper won't accept the editorial,
another option is something called an advertorial.
Advertorials are paid advertisements that look and read like a regular Op-Ed
piece in a newspaper. Different newspapers have different policies about what
kind of information can appear in a paid ad, but many will simply print an
advertorial with a special banner that's says "advertisement."
Ethical or not, studies have shown that readers still have a hard time
distinguishing between advertorials and regular editorials.
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