I vehemently disagree with one line of thinking she presented. That will be the subject of my Friday morning post, which was actually written before today’s presentation. At the same time, she pretty much puts most public relations practitioners to shame with her knowledge and know-how. And she’s a marketing professor.

At the luncheon I was surprised to hear one of my posts was circulated locally, of which I had no idea. I was flattered. Then I remembered this site’s goal is not just to be critical of the news media, as this post was. I try to reserve salvos for the public relations problems seemingly ever-evident.

So here goes.

Maybe I’m naïve and ignorant. I simply just don’t get pitches deliberately gone awry. Being mistakenly mis-targeted is one thing, a bit like my spelling and grammar–general ineptitude.

But to deliberately try to pitch a media outlet that simply has no use for your story idea is beyond comprehension. I have an upcoming post on what it’s like being on the receiving end of bad public relations—first is being targeted for pitches of no relevance to what I intend to cover, and second is refusing to be added to a news-release distribution list from a major organization despite multiple requests.

It’s fair to say, since I have experience in both freelance writing and PR, that I can sympathize with journalists who hold grudges against PR people. To them, often rightfully, we are biased, spin-doctoring scum.

Today’s email makes it more apparent why. Peter Shankman, who gleefully runs helpareporterout.com, had to go on the warpath. Shankman’s rules are explicit and simple. His cause is noble. Every journalist and PR person in the world should sign up for his emails. Today, though, he was pissed. His email, slightly edited, explains it all:

“Welcome to the last HARO email of the last day of April!

“Unfortunately, my quest to root out idiocy and heal the rift between PR people and journalists took a setback today, when one reporter who posted a query got three pitches that were so off-topic, and so not-even-remotely-close to what she wanted, that I had no choice but to ban them. It was such a no-brainer, it was sad.

“I’m not going to out the agencies publicly. (Although I’m not ruling it out in the future…) But know that I’m serious about this, people. You screw up like that, and you’re history. Go pay the other service $6,500 a year and SPAM to your heart’s content. But it won’t happen here.

“What gets me the most angry about this whole thing is that it’s not like you simply “made an error.” You had to consciously THINK about whether this pitch worked, then, KNOWING it didn’t, you chose to send it ANYWAY. I just don’t get why you’d do that.”

I know why: Too many PR people are arrogant assholes.

Nevertheless, Toys-R-Us gets blasted for not buying online ads announcing recalls–even though a Google search yields voluminous articles about the recalls. But a quick search for “recalls” on the Toys-R-Us site leads to the above statement and links to more information, including safety FAQs, recall information, safety tips and other links.

A while back I touted the virtues of Gmail

Google offers far more than just Gmail. There are four other important features Google offers that give us increased potential to enhance our effectiveness for public relations.

1. Google News Alerts are a critical tool for every PR person who monitors news coverage. News Alerts have basic, important features, and you can easily get into your inbox real-time, daily or weekly links to news related to search terms of your choice. The drawback is of course that Google News Alerts will only send you news that appears in Google News. This is a mixed blessing. By searching for specific terms, words or phrases, you can apply a news alert to be sent to your email, but if specific news outlets are not submitting to Google News, you may miss some critical coverage; for example, niche and specialty publications (or in my case, rural Nevada newspapers). It’s best to also continue monitoring news by specific media outlets in addition to adding regular news alerts to your media monitoring. Google News also allows for Blog Alerts, which function in the exact same way as news. A caveat: choosing search terms may take some practice. You will notice which terms work and which do not. Experiment.
2. Google Docs & Spreadsheets allow for easy sharing of documents (e.g., press release drafts) online. You can set up permissions for specific people to view/edit your documents. The benefit of this is self explanatory. One drawback is saving Google Docs as Word documents, wherein the formatting gets funky in the translation. The Google Docs & Spreadsheets interface also takes some getting used to and pales in comparison to the feature-rich Microsoft Word. But for developing online access to share with clients and so on, Google Docs & Spreadsheets is an easy and inexpensive way to go. Simply, it allows for remote access to files. (The draft of this post was saved as a Google document to be edited later on my laptop.)
3. Google Reader is about as important as Google News Alerts, and it allows the monitoring of Web content in real time in a central location—your Google Reader interface, or on your iGoogle page as explained below. The Reader lets you to create a personalized list of RSS feeds. I primarily track other blogs of interest, as well as niche media outlets. Using Reader is invaluable and much of my blog content, or ideas for content, comes from items that show up in my Reader.
4. Google’s new iGoogle allows you to customize your Web interface, essentially putting all of the above in one place. I use iGoogle as my default homepage on my Internet browsers at work, home and on my laptop (iGoogle also works on my Motorola Q). iGoogle allows you to customize your screen ‘gadgets,’ or mini windows within your larger screen window, for easy retrieval. (Click the thumbnail image above for a full-size view of the iGoogle page). Tabs also allow you to create multiple screen interfaces to quickly gain access to needed information. For example, my default homepage has five tabs: Home, Local News, National News, Design and Science News. Clicking on each give me my customized gadgets under each category. Clicking on Science News, I get my latest Science Friday links, with this as the top one—yesterday’s Science Friday podcast on NPR: NASA Troubles – SciFri Podcast – 2007072711. Play with iGoogle, and you will see what I mean as far as customizability. It’s suitable for multiple interests: personal, work related and so on. My “Home” gadgets include this blog’s posts, driving directions, a dictionary/thesaurus, the free CallWave Text Messaging gadget, local weather and my Google Reader gadget. From just my default homepage, I can get access to 90 percent of what I need on a regular basis.

[Disclaimer: this post is intended to provide advice on using Google for public relations productivity, not expert user advice, which others are far better suited to provide. Also, though I use Google ads on this blog, my recommendations for using Google come from personal experience. I am not getting paid to recommend Google's services. I welcome feedback on other online tools for public relations use and will readily recommend those found useful, especially if those services are free.]

 Consumerist, it should be noted, is well worth visiting because of the topics it covers. It is full of potential PR cases studies.

(EDIT: Reviewing my past post on Consumer Reports, I noticed the CR news release was embargoed.)