Peter Kafka, who covers the entertainment industry for Forbes, says there's a stark difference between PR execs in Hollywood and those who operate in business centers.
PR execs in entertainment "are the ones who say, 'We're going to pass' [on a story in which they have a vested interest] whereas on the business side the person knows we're
going to the story regardless, and tries to help us out with the facts," says Kafka, who started at Forbes in 1997 as a fact checker and was promoted in 2000 to staff writer (with
a cover story in '03 on DreamWorks SKG and a recent profile on new Sony boss Andy Lack). Kafka, who edits Forbes' annual Celebrity 100 Issue (featuring the richest celebrities)
and has edited the Forbes 400 (featuring, simply, the world's richest people), regularly works with PR execs, since they're considered the gatekeepers in Tinseltown. But his
problems with PR folks are universal.
Kafka's Bugaboos
School Daze. Despite being part of the Holy Trinity of business magazines (along with BusinessWeek and Fortune), Kafka still gets an inordinate number of pitches from PR
execs who haven't done their homework.
Since Forbes has an unorthodox approach to business coverage, it's essential to familiarize yourself with its content. "Forbes has a peculiar sense of what a story is," he
says. "We're not a news magazine and are not reporting on things that are time-specific. I'd much rather spend a few minutes talking to a PR person about the magazine than
listening to a pitch about some generic press conference."
Sloppy work. Kafka says it's one thing for PR execs to provide access to a source but it's entirely another when the exec acts as an interpreter and/or worse, a conduit
for interviews. "When they're talking to someone on my behalf they inevitably haven't asked the right questions and end up being more of a translator" than providing some tangible
information, Kafka says.
He adds that he's comfortable when PR execs sit in on interviews, but that's where it should end. "If I've got 20 minutes with a CEO I want to talk to him. If the subject isn't
willing to talk without the aid of PR, he probably shouldn't be talking," he adds. "As soon as I hear 'What so-and-so should have said,' I put down the pen."
Soaring expectations. Kafka ends up meeting more business executives than he writes about, a result -- more often than not -- of poor communications between the PR exec
and the client on precisely what Kafka is working on and what the story involves. Nevertheless, this doesn't stop PR execs from thinking that since Kafka took the time to meet the
client a story in Forbes is a fait accompli. "There are editorial parts of Forbes that have lots of layers and I can't make any guarantees," Kafka says. "But it happens time and
time again (thinking the story is a slam dunk) and it's unrealistic."
What Works
The usual, which, unfortunately among those in the PR field, is unusual to come by among reporters, and Kafka is no exception. To wit, calling Kafka to chat about trends,
stories, or any other "juice" in the marketplace that doesn't necessarily concern your client(s). "I make the time for people who give me a heads-up, and can tell me something is
percolating," he says, adding that this is a two-way street that most PR execs seldom cross. "When they call me with the heads-up I can do the same in terms of pointing them in
the right direction, but it's only a handful of them who do this."
Contact: [email protected] (see the first Bugaboos item to make sure you're not wasting Kafka's time).