Getting Ink

Remember before mail merge?

The days before mail merge. Ah, it was all so simple then. Today, though, I get sent this sort of thing:

Dear Mrs Whittle

Please find below details of UK bridge teacher xxxx who is currently in Botswana teaching various parts of the game to the Botswana Bridge Federation. On xxx's return we would be interested in writing about his unique experience in Whittle, Sally, including some interesting facts/information on bridge.

Many thanks for your consideration and I look forward to hearing from you if this is of interest. Our press release is below.

Kind regards

xxxx
Communications Officer

Apparently, this one was sent out to lots of other well-known publications including Gordon, Olivia and Thomas, Kim...

Eewwww.

Thanks to Response Source, this popped into the inboxes of dozens of journo friends and colleagues today:

Message sent from: XXX
Email address: XXX
Job title: Producer/Director
Publication: Channel 4 Television
Message:

We're looking for a female journalist who is a mother (preferably to a
baby or to young children) who will present an immersive documentary for
Channel 4 about other people's breast milk. You'll need to be available for
15 days filming including a week in the States during the second week of
June.

Please contact: xxx@itv.com  

Immersed in what, do you suppose?

Enough of the idiot surveys, already

I'm a big fan of surveys. Many a journalist has thanked their lucky stars for surveys on a quiet news day, and a good, timely survey can help get your client in the press even when there's no hard news. But seriously, guys - there's a limit even to my willingness to read some of the rubbish that gets churned out.

Today this gem popped in to my inbox:

"Britons Spend Two Months a Year Looking for Emails"

Hmm. Let's take a second to think about that shall we? Do I believe that workers spend one sixth of their year looking for emails? That's four hours a day, or 28 hours a week. If I work Monday to Friday, that means I spend over five and a half hours every day just looking for emails that have been put in the wrong place. With an hour for lunch, that gives me about 90 minutes a day to do some, you know, work.

The survey goes on to claim that this giant task is costing British employers £11 billion a year. Wow.

On top of the £66 billion businesses spend on red tape, the £22 billion cost of 'telephone tag', the £180 billion cost of staff organising their personal lives in the workplace, the £2.4 billion cost of high-tech crime and the £12 billion cost of sickness, it really is amazing anybody can afford to actually stay in business these days.

I've been in PR agency offices and watched staff desperately trying to come up with these figures on the back of an envelope, usually by multiplying some analyst prediction or client claim with a UK average hourly wage. Please, please, please, just stop it. If you need stats in a press release, surely there's a more credible way to do it. How about:

• the rise or fall in spending on a particular product/service/market sector?
• the average amount of time saves per day adopting a new working practice?
• the percentage of businesses/people affected by an issue?
• a measure of how important people consider an issue to be, tracked over time?

Anything please apart from the: "It's costing UK businesses £250 gazillion and workers are wasting 23 hours a day".

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.