June 17th, 2009
Building walls between PR, journalists: A worst practice
One of the elements I love about social media is the tearing down of walls. I have an incredible network of contacts on multiple social networks to whom I can reach out in mere minutes. Just this morning, even, I put out an inquiry for this very blog post on Twitter and received about 100 emails within an hour. It’s a beautiful thing.
That’s not to say that I don’t need to reach beyond my network at times to find fresh sources. How boring would it be if I consistently quoted or wrote about people only within my network? So I use services like Help A Reporter Out (HARO) and ProfNet when I need a little extra oomph for a story — or even have a fledgling idea and want a sanity check.
Enter my confusion when yesterday, I ran across a new-ish service called Reporter’s Source, which runs off of pretty much the same premise as HARO. Sources subscribe to a newsletter, journalists send in queries, sources respond to queries. Oh, but there is a catch. Respondents don’t get to reach out to the reporter’s directly. They get to submit their responses to the folks at Reporter’s Source who screen and determine which pitches get back to the journalists.
What?
I find this baffling. Why, in the age of breaking down communication barriers, would you think that a service that builds walls is a good idea? As a blogger and a one-time PR person, I don’t want anyone playing god with my content.
One of the things I love about HARO (not so much ProfNet — it’s so daunting), is that I do sometimes get pitches that are left-of-center. I can think of at least three blog posts that have developed from people reaching out with a connected, if not perfect, idea. What’s even better is that if I get pitches that are just ridiculous I forward them over to founder Peter Shankman, who takes action, sometimes even banning PR people from the list for violating HARO’s terms of service. Speaking of Shankman, I asked him his thoughts about the gatekeeper approach.
Next: HARO and Reporter’s Source respond –>
Jennifer Leggio, aka "Mediaphyter," writes about the "social business" side of social media - including enterprise, security and reputation issues. See her full profile and disclosure of her industry affiliations.
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| 06/17/09
