There was a nice story in today’s New
York Times about a company that
officially launched today named NewsBasis.
According to the article,
the goal of this site is to better connect public relations
professionals and journalists. I’m personally very excited to test this
site out and will be sure to report back in a few weeks with my
thoughts.
My immediate thought however is this: while I believe the concept of such a site is fantastic, I’m uncomfortable with one of, and perhaps the largest, reasons why it needs to exist. Cold calling, calling during obvious deadlines, not researching a reporter’s recent articles and even simply not proofreading an email is plain unprofessional. And to be perfectly honest, I believe if a PR professional uses any of the aforementioned tactics, they should be hung up on or tossed into the junk mail. I’m a firm believer in the fact that media and PR professionals can always have a mutually-beneficial relationship as long as we’re both respectful and smart about why we both need each other. Reporters have demanding clients the same way we do – editors and subscribers which can sometimes be more difficult to please. We have to remember that when we reach out to them and if we did, this great article in the Times today would not have opened as it did, “There are few professional relationships that seesaw between love and hate more than those of public relations people and journalists…”
Let’s change that to “love/love relationships!”
I’ll be back in a few weeks with more insight into NewsBasis. I’m hoping it will help better spread the love.
