Getting Ink

I was once told I had a genius IQ, you know...

But clearly whoever told me? Was lying through their teeth.

I managed to send to a request on Gorkana PR earlier this week accidentally publishing my home phone number.

Yesterday, I used the site again and this time, well this time I was DEAD careful. I didn't select phone number, I only put in my email address and sent the request. Two minutes later, my home phone rang. It was a PR person, cheerfully telling me my phone number was on my Gorkana request. Gah.

Do me a favour? If you got my number from Gorkana this week, delete it. And ask your colleagues to do the same? My office number is on my website, which is here.

Personally, I'm blaming Mr Gorkana and his fancy redesign, because I'm practically an official genius and never make stupid mistakes. Particularly not standing in the busy supermarket car park last night and spending a whole 60 seconds trying to open the car door before my 3-year-old daughter pointed out I was trying to open the car parked NEXT to our car. Seriously, try getting out of that one with your dignity intact.

Grrr. A day of small annoyances.

I just went to log into Gorkana to send a media request. The website has been redesigned (looks lovely) but it seems as though in the redesign my "save password on this computer" feature was lost. I don't know my password. There's no obvious "forgotten your password?" button. So I call GorkanaPR where a nice man says someone will re-send my password. Tomorrow. Useful. [EDIT: They already fixed it, which is VERY fast. Thanks, Mr Gorkana]

I also got a call from a PR person who attended a 101 workshop and is upset because the journalist taking one part of the course was "abrasive". She wants to report us to Trading Standards. I can't work out if this is annoying or the funniest thing I've ever heard.

PR client. Seriously. Tried to convince me Whitney Houston is a better drunk anthem song than Billy Idol's White Wedding or the all-time classic Girlfriend in a Coma. Some people just don't know they're born, frankly.

Trying to switch from BT to Virgin for broadband. BT rang to ask me why (great CRM). I pointed out that when I received a bill of £120 in August, I rang to see if I could get a cheaper service. My October bill was £240. BT offered me £2 a month off my broadband, "as a loyal customer". Wow.

Unfortunate. But still funny.

Matthew Stibbe of Articulate Marketing has an excellent blog over at Bad Writing.

But perhaps not the best idea to post a link to your latest sample of brilliant marketing copy if the aforementioned copy has a typo/grammatical error in the headline of the first document....

Shouldn't someone have proofed this stuff?

Oh, and Bite's blog seems to have been infested with spam comments from the gaming community.

So, there was an Englishman, a Scotsman and a Seaman...

Great piece here, which I belatedly spotted in this weekend's Observer. A professor at a London university has published the grammatical and spelling mistakes of his students. Among them was this gem, written by a student who was later awarded a first:

"It initats a undisired non-specific response in mamammals."

Another student wrote about "insemination of these cows at the age of 3 with their fathers seamen"

Crikey.

According to the professor, if you're a graduate under 30, there's a good chance you'll have problems spelling words such as occurred, occurrence, neutral, heard, forth and  occasions.  As for apostrophes? Forget about it.

Does it matter? I think so. Hacks who can't spell are less likely to be commissioned. I once spent four hours combing through a 2,500 word profile of Vodafone where the writer had spelled the company's name Vodaphone throughout. I never commissioned him again. He wasn't brilliant enough to justify the time it took me to edit his copy.

I'm not sure about PRs. I have done lots of training over the years with PR agencies helping their account execs learn the seven correct places to use an apostrophe (no more, no less, people!) and the difference between conscience and conscious. I like to think it's made a difference - surely clients are more likely to think they're getting value for money if releases aren't littered with mistakes?

For anyone who is interested in improving their spelling/grammar without paying for someone to teach them, I thoroughly recommend this and this. Both great basic texts for anyone who wants to reduce the chances of making a reely imbarasing clanger in print...

Restraint: we've heard of it (vaguely)

One of the really bloody annoying lovely things about being a journalist is that whatever you say, do, write etc is all out there for the great unwashed to have an opinion on.

So today, I got an email from another journalist that was criticising something I'd done in quite personal terms - it was so completely offensive and infuriating that I couldn't stop myself writing a really smart-aleck email reply that may have included one or two Anglo-Saxon words, basically telling the journo in question that she is a talentless harridan who should stick to taking cocaine and sleeping with her editors. Bad idea. True, but still a bad idea.

Obviously (this being me we're talking about) I then sent the flame mail to completely the wrong person, so I'd like to apologise again to the poor PR who actually received the message. I took this as the universe telling me not to respond to annoying messages until I've had a cup of tea and counted to 5 million...

However, I do love it when someone else does take on their critics - and rips them to shreds. Cue Forever Amber, who has done a brilliant job of taking on some fool who criticised the grammar on Amber's blog. You go Girl.

Oops

Apologies to those of you trying to access the site today - I seem to have pressed the wrong button at some point in the last 24 hours and took it offline. Blame my enormous technical incompetence.

Anyway, I've (almost) bought a new house today, so am in fine fettle.

But still irritated slightly by our old mukker BadHack claiming* to have spotted an example of bad journalism without crediting Kieren McCarthy (a not v bad journo) with spotting the offending item a week or so back....

As BadHack himself would no doubt agree, it's all about spreading the linklove. Incidentally, we could have included Badhack in our 'whatever happened to' post earlier this month, but frankly, if someone can't find half a dozen decent stories about hacks behaving badly in a month, then they're just not trying hard enough. Why, in the last week, we've found out about one journo starting a fire, another deliberately faking comments on his own magazine's blog, and a third who just found out that a colleague has been sleeping with his girlfriend while she was apparently away 'on business'.

(of course, it could just be a good, old-fashioned coincidence, so please don't sue us)

Having my own bunny moment...

Just to prove it's not just PR people who can have a bunny moment, I found myself sprouting long ears and a fluffy tail this week. And I'm currently fighting the urge to curl up under the desk and die of embarrassment.

Like many journalists, I tend to trawl through a range of magazines and newspapers in search of ideas - and if I see something I think might help generate an interesting story, I save it on my computer.

Recently, I clipped an article from a US magazine about project management - then pitched an article on project management to one of my favourite editors. I spent quite a bit of time chasing down people to interview for the article and managed to get it finished (nearly) on time.

A few days later, I get an email from my puzzled editor asking why I seem to have filed an article that was written and published by another magazine two years ago.

Turns out that after writing my article and carefully proofing it, I'd then attached the clipped article not my own article to the email. I suspect the ed couldn't quite work out if I'd gone completely barmy and developed amnesia or whether I was a shameless plagiarist.

After a really embarrassing phone call, I think he believes it was idiocy not plagiarism, but I think I'll wait until he commissions me again to be sure...

The problem with being a PR...

..is apparently all those tricky words you guys have to master. An anonymous journo popped this into the GI mailbox this morning...

"A PR recently approached me about a feature I'm writing on digital asset management, and the subject line on his email was "I can definitely help you". As it happens (long sigh), his client was not really relevant, but, being in a relatively good mood, I took the trouble to send him an email explaining in more detail the subject I was tackling. His response? "Ahh, problem with the industry - too many homonyms."

Homonyms? Homonyms?!? Bless.

Spot the Ball(s Up)

So, guess which hapless press office just sent out a press release to all the journos in the phone book today, announcing their company had bought rights to distribute a new movie?

What makes this potentially dull news the best thing we've seen in ages is that the bunny in question forwarded a release that had been passed around the company first. as a result, the entire email conversation was revealed in all its glory, including a long argument about internal rows over PR and a huge rant about a conflict with one of their publishing partners. Although one suspects not a partner for too much longer...

Quite marvellous.

Ouch of the Day

Goes to the PR agency that sent out details of their new office yesterday evening to a staggering 4,000 plus newsdesks and individual journalists.

Full marks for effective communication, guys, but next time maybe it'd be a better idea not to include everyone's name and email in the cc: field?