The way to Mike Hofman's heart -- he's a staff writer for Boston-based Inc. magazine -- is not necessarily through his stomach, but he did like the batch of homemade
cookies a publicist once sent him. He appreciated even more her low-pressure pitch right up his beat. "She pitched me like a friend out in the world, not a barracuda trying to get
me to do what she wanted," he says. Hofman only considers publicists who give him time and space to warm up to them and he's not afraid to blacklist those who don't. "There are
certain mailers and phone calls I get that I tend to ignore," he says. "It's not hard to identify the people who send me meaningless stuff."
(Hofman, Inc., 617/248-8000.)