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By The Impartial Aggregator
You have sent your response to the reporter. In fact, you may have sent out a half dozen in the past week.
But not a single reply. Why is that?
In this article, we collated and anonymized comments from journalists who have used similar media request services to give you a flavor on what is happening on the other side of the fence.
These comments are no holds barred, so tuck in the ego and read on at your peril. 😅
Journalists are human, too
We are all busy. Sources included. Running a business is a full-time undertaking. And taking a stab at homebrew PR? That is just asking for overtime. So we get it when you are frustrated when your efforts did not result in a response. "Why are they taking so long?" Then you see the story come out sans your comment. It is a salt-in-the-wound kind of insulted.
On the other side though, there is a different kind of chaos. One in which emails from sources make up only a small fraction. And your email was a fraction of the latter.
The lesson here is that you need to help the press help you. And that is the point of this article--to shed light on the fustrations that reporters face and hoping you will take something away from this for your next source reply.
Well, here goes.
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"I receive dozens of irrelevant pitches per day, and frankly, these messages just make me mad and make me appreciate the pitches that aren't. The gems were relevant, on-point, and helpful, to the point, I save their contact so I could contact them directly when I need their views for a future article."
"OMG, please don't be so self-involved and send me bios more than a paragraph long. I acknowledge your professional history is remarkable, but context, people. I am scanning hundreds of pitches here, not unsolicited biographies. Frankly, a one- to two-sentence bio is enough, if I need more, I will call."
"I love it when the sender demonstrates that what he says is worth my while. More honest originality, less fleets of templated captains obvious. This also informs me whether I should extend the engagement into an in-depth interview."
"I care more about what the source has to say than how many business awards they claim to have won."
"In your HelpThePress pitches, mention if you've been featured in a story before. Familiarity with media breeds ease in the next interview. With shorter deadlines, sometimes I prefer to work with interviewees who get it."
"With so many daily emails on top of my HelpThePress responses, I really appreciate it when a source clearly labels their email subject with my original request. It makes sorting easier. I also doubly appreciate it when a source organises its information into a cloud folder. Come on, dropbox is free."
"Gosh, stop following up on whether I will respond! If I did replied to you, I would have to do the same for the other 50 people who are "following up", too. And nobody's got the time for that (if they wanted to meet their deadlines)."
"It feels like I am caught in a newsroom Tinder. Too many sources catfishing their credentials or giving vague unformed responses. It is no wonder I swipe left often."
*This is an article in progress. In other words, we will update it with more comments in the future.
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