Professional and Journalists exist in the same space and work closely together constantly. This relationship is symbiotic one where reporters seek access to the clients PR professionals represent and reporters open the doors to the audience the PR client is seeking to reach.
For PR to be effective reporters and their respective publications must be credible/trustworthy to their readers. What does this mean? This means that reporters can’t report on garbage and have to call out BS when they see it. Having no editorial standard doesn’t motivate an audience’s trust and makes coverage in a publication pointless to a PR person.
In tandem, reporters need PR professionals to open the doors to sources that are required to tell a complete story. Most journalists are often dealing with a department of people managing these conversations and it is these communications teams that are actually pushing for executives to speak to reporters. Most executives would rather not take time out of their day to potentially embarrass themselves with an interview but it’s the work of tireless PR pros working in the background that make interviews seem easy for reporters. From organizing different sources, requested materials (images, collateral) to overall logistics, it’s the PR people that bring it all together for the journalist.
Getting Good Press Takes Skill, Not Favors
Now that we’ve covered why PR people and journalists need each other, let’s go over how they work together. What gets reporters to respond to a PR person’s email is not a “relationship” but the value that PR person can provide. If a journalist gets a timely email, with a creative-take or the exact information they are looking for, they will respond. Some PR people claim this is all due to a relationship with a specific journalist.
The most important thing for a company to consider when selecting a PR firm is not the relationships they claim to have (we all have connections to reporters – that shouldn’t be the deciding factor) but rather the creativity and agility of their media outreach. If a PR team is successful, it will have business-objective aligned coverage and have a track record of building credibility within its target industries. It will be able to produce case studies, example articles and testimonials. A supposed relationship is worthless if it can’t generate the meaningful collateral that proves that the PR team is effective.
Being a Journalists First Call
A recent article in PR News with the headline, 85% of Tech Journalists Have a Primary PR Contact. How to Be That Person captures the challenge of working in PR vs. selling PR. At 1903, we pride ourselves on our media relations and stay up to date on the latest tactics for the industry. The attention-grabbing headline described a different scenario in the actual body of the article. When a population of 350 tech journalists were surveyed, 85% said they have at least one PR contact they trust enough to call first when a story is breaking.
Working previously in the healthcare industry, we have seen our fair-share of clinical trial results and we understand that “at least one” means that the actual number can be ANY NUMBER over one. It doesn’t mean journalists have one primary contact, as the headline suggests. It just means that journalists leverage PR people when news breaks.
The headline reinforces the idea that journalists are only using one source, so if you don’t have that extra-special-relationship, you won’t be securing coverage. If this were true, what happens to that PR person when that reporter changes jobs or coverage area? Alternatively, it feels ridiculous to believe that a journalist would hook their entire career to one PR person. What would that journalist do if their one PR person changes jobs or industry-focus?
PR pros and journalists both work with a suite of people. Journalists will favor anyone who can bring them interesting and timely stories and make their life easier when reporting on those topics.
Good Old Fashion Media Relations
The PR News article goes on to give some fairly solid advice for pitching: Lead with your data, tailor your pitches to the journalist/publication, don’t use AI, give plenty of time to cover a breaking story, understand how quickly a newsroom moves and get to the point in all communications.
The next time a PR agency makes promises to secure coverage solely based on relationships and have no creativity to back it up, they may be hoping to dazzle you with names rather than the hard work it takes to secure positive coverage.