Getting Ink

Maybe I'm getting old...

Actually, there's no maybe about it.

I'm careering towards my mid 30s, and I'm starting to have those fantasies about ditching the job and the mortgage, in favour of roaming the world with a backpack and an iPod, before I get completely past it.

That said, I’m still surprised by the number of senior journalists who seem to be leaving the profession for greener pastures in PR, corporate comms and analysis – including the likes of Ben Tudor, Kieren McCarthy and Will Sturgeon.

I was reading a debate on Fleet St Forum this week, about whether it’s possible to earn a living as a hack, with many participants saying they wanted out of journalism. PJ says it’s not reasonable to expect more than 30k a year from journalism, which doesn’t seem worth the effort.

For me, journalism is absolutely worth the effort. I get to choose my own hours and my own clients. I get to work part-time and spend my days meeting and talking to loads of different people. There are times when you have to work silly hours to meet a deadline, there are clients who  never pay on time, and good rates are hard to find - but I think I'm lucky to do this job. I make a good living, and I think if you're business-minded, it's possible to make a great living at journalism.  You just have to balance the "dull but profitable" work with the "interesting but pays buttons" commissions.

More importantly though, how many companies are there that will still offer hacks a 60 grand salary and a nice desk? Most of the hacks I know are barely house-trained, much less able to hold down a respectable job involving concepts such as ‘customer service’ and ‘billable hours’.

What's a word worth?

As a PR executive, how important is it that you understand grammar and spelling?

Jo at Strive PR thinks the issue is over-emphasised and that journalists shouldn't dismiss a press release simply because of a few spelling or grammar errors. Over at Common Sense PR, meanwhile, Eric wonders whether poor grammar necessarily means you're a poor communicator? Yes, it does.

When you don't know the difference between your and you're, or their and there, I judge you. If you use like when you mean such as, I think you're slapdash. The same applies to all those people who don't understand that fewer refers to number and less than to volume.

We offer grammar and writing workshops through the:101 and I am always amazed by how rarely the bright PR executives I meet can tell me the difference between affect and effect, or the active and passive voice. I can't remember ever meeting a PR executive who could tell me why it's bad form to split an infinitive, much less what an infinitive is.

Part of the issue is professionalism. Whether you're a journalist or a PR executive, clients are paying for your skill in providing professional copy. If someone is paying you to write, you should have an impeccable command of the language. They shouldn't need to 'fix' what you've sold them. It's also an issue of pragmatism: every time you use the wrong word, or get the punctuation wrong in a sentence, it makes your copy a little bit harder to understand. You can't be an effective communicator if you can't put together the best possible words, in the best possible order.

Improving your understanding of grammar and spelling needn't be hard work. There's a lot you can do to address the most common mistakes, and quickly improve the quality of your writing. My own recommendations in this field would be:

1. English for Journalists, by Wynford Hicks: an easy read that lists the language rules that are most commonly misunderstood.
2. The Oxford Guide to Writing by Thomas Kane: has been my writing bible for years. A guide to writing clear, compelling English.
3. The Economist Style Guide. If you're ever unsure whether to use Internet or internet, this will provide good advice.
4. The BBC Style Guide. Great for checking on international, political and politically sensitive terminology
5. The AP Style Guide. Used by journalists the world over, and for $25 a year, it's a bargain.

Getting Ink Requests: a few changes

We've made some small tweaks to the free media requests site, Getting Ink Requests.

First of all, there is the crucial change of colour, so the blog matches my own nice new website - see?  Pretty.

Slightly more fundamentally, we made some changes to the journalist profiles on the site, with a big directory you can browse, plus separate listings of journalists by category. We're gradually uploading profiles to the site a couple at a time (since 80% of subscribers use the daily email feed, we don't want to drown them in profiles), but over the coming weeks we will be providing you with free access to biographical information and contact details for key journalists in a variety of sectors - just click on a journalist's name to see the details we have for them.   

If you're a journalist and you'd like your own site to be listed, or to have your own profile on Getting Ink Requests, just fill in this form with your details. All we ask in return is for a link to the site from your own blog or website, please. You can email us with your details, too.

As ever, we're interested in feedback on the site and changes. We look forward to hearing from you.

The:101 launches new phone pitching workshop

So, I may have mentioned before on this blog that I happen to  run the world's finest* PR training company, the:101.

This summer, we're launching a brand new workshop called mini:101. It's a three-hour telephone pitching workshop delivered at your offices for between three and six delegates.

Choose your 101 trainer(s) and we'll come along, provide lots of practical advice and tips on things like:

• How to sell in press releases over the phone to news reporters
• How to sell in clients when there isn't news, using the news agenda
• How to deal with journalist "pushback" and get a positive outcome
• Things PRs say that can put journalists off  (and what to say instead)
• Techniques for selling in products, interviews, case histories and more

Prices are pretty competitive (providing you throw in some nice biscuits) and there's plenty of time to talk about your specific clients and target publications. Our trainers are fantastic and all have 10 years plus experience writing for just about every business magazine, national newspaper or newstand magazine you care to mention.

Just email me if you'd like to know any more!

* well, we think so.

The Twits.

I use Twitter. I like Twitter. There are some issues around the complete lack of any business plan and increasing downtime on the platform - but overall? It's A Good Thing. 

But oh dear God. Is there a bottomless jug of Kool-Aid somewhere I don't know about?

Following the bright ideas that we should use Twitter to review books and write news stories comes this gem: let's insist PR execs and companies can ONLY pitch us using Twitter. What utter twaddle.

Stowe Boyd is a highly-respected social media writer and commentator, as well as serving on the boards of several organisations in the US and Europe. I bet he gets loads of spam pitches from PR execs, and I bet it's pretty tiresome. But making PR execs jump through ridiculous hoops of sending stylised Twitpitches (and if you get it wrong three times, you're on the auto-delete filter, folks) seems counter-productive to me.

As writers, journalists, bloggers or whatever - our job is to dig out stories. Sometimes this means we have to do a bit of work. Although it's great when a smart PR exec sends us absolutely the right sort of information when we need it, sometimes the information comes from a customer, who's sent a long, rambling email about their experiences. Or it's a half-remembered anecdote repeated by a friend of a friend. Sometimes it's a case of reading a dull press announcement and spotting the angle that the PR exec has missed. Sometimes the story just is too complicated to fit into one sentence.

I'm all in favour of PR execs making the pitching process more effective, and increasing the odds of more reporters being interested in their clients' stories. But I, for one, don't expect to be spoonfed*.

(* except when on deadline and writing about multi-core processors obviously)

Journalists and block delete: it's nothing new

There was all kinds of kerfuffle in blogland this week when tech journalist Matt Haughey and  blogger Gina Trapani admitted that they've started filtering and block deleting emails from certain PR agencies and domains. Well, Gina has actually set up a naming and shaming Wiki here.

Personally, public outing of agencies isn't generally a tactic I use (I might if I thought it would work) but I'm also a bit surprised by some of the outrage being expressed at the idea of filtering.

I've had an auto-delete filter for almost ten years. There are probably five domains and 50 PR execs on the list. They're the people who persistently send me large numbers of non-news releases that have naff all to do with anything I write, frequently including attached images and PDFs. Or there are agencies that haven't properly sorted out their databases, so send me releases to my married name, my single name, my training company email address, my ISP email and a temporary gmail address I use in emergencies.

It's not a big deal. I've asked to be removed from mailing lists but it rarely works - for reasons discussed previously - so I filter. If you find yourself on the wrong end of a reporter or blogger's filtering process, the reality is they would never have covered your client anyway. So you're no worse off than you were to begin with!

If you don't want to end up on a filter in the first place, my advice would be:

• Don't send all your travel press releases to a writer who NEVER covers travel. Especially don't send them every day for a month (yes, this company is the latest addition to my auto-delete filter)
• Don't send more than one press release a week. Seriously, nobody has that much news.
• Don't issue press releases about executive appointments to a general press list. We don't care.
• Don't send attachments with press releases. If you have images, it's enough to tell us you have them.

10 Reasons Journalists Think PR is Crap

Browsing through Twitter updates this morning, I notice that the lovely Stephen Davies thinks that bloggers cynically slate PR execs simply to drive up traffic. This is, apparently, A Bad Thing.

I'm not sure it's true. My highest ranking posts are generally:

1. Proofreading tests and grammar tests. Everyone loves a quiz.
2. Advice on press releases and pitching techniques
3. Gossip

That said, I do get a bit bored myself of the whole "die, press release" or "die PR" or "print is dead" headlines. Seriously, does anyone believe those stupid pronouncements from on high any more?

Anyway, in the interests of the scientific method - although my scientist chap tells me I have no grasp of such matters as a graduate of a "pretend" subject - I've come up with the most cynically PR-hating headline I can on a lovely sunny morning. So let's see how many of my lovely readers click through to read this one, shall we? Results next week.