During my long career in public relations, I’ve always ignored many of the basic tenets of PR that are taught in communications schools, written in books and practiced at agencies.
Many of these traditional methods can hamper, not help, PR employees from receiving positive results. I came to that conclusion based on my experience as a reporter and editor at New York City dailies before joining the PR industry.
One tenet that that I believe makes no sense is always sending a journalist a short pitch with a snappy headline. The reasoning behind this practice? The belief that journalists receive so many pitches that they don’t have the time to read them all, particularly long ones.
My opinion? Keeping the pitch short means PR people will come up short.
Here’s some ways a longer pitch can attract the attention of even the busiest journalists.
More Detail Yields More Results
A pitch of few words is useless to a journalist because it doesn’t provide enough information. Exceptions can be found when pitching a well-known celebrity or a story regarding a legitimate, ongoing news happening, like Boeing’s problems or trending hard news subjects.
Make It Interesting
Journalists may send pitches directly to an assignment desk if they don’t include reasons why it might make a good story. Of course, when writing a pitch, it must be crafted so it doesn’t waste the recipient’s time. That means producing a pitch that is intriguing enough so the recipient will continue reading it regardless of the length.
Write Like a Journalist
Pitches should be written with a good hard news or feature lede, the way a journalist writes a story, followed-up with subsequent fact-filled graphs.
The real reason many journalists will not take the time to read a lengthy pitch is because the first two paragraphs don’t contain anything resembling a summary of the story or how it can be developed, not because of its length.
The great majority of my pitches are about 500 to 700 words, and I’ve never been told that they are too long. In fact, many times some of the verbiage ends up in a story.
Offer Story Suggestions
Always include another section at the end of the pitch that contains several different ways that a story can be developed, either as a hard news or feature story. It takes a little more work, but busy journalists will appreciate it.
Develop a Relationship
Of course, the best way to gain a reporter’s, editor’s or producer’s attention is for the PR person to be familiar with how the individual approaches a story, and tailor the pitch to that journalist’s style.
Edit. Re-read. Edit Again.
And one more bit of advice. Some journalists will automatically toss a pitch or press release if it’s filled with typos. Make certain your pitch or press release does not.
Arthur Solomon, a former journalist, was a senior VP/senior counselor at Burson-Marsteller.