journalism Tag

10 Oct For the Love of PR

Molly Borchers, Senior Communications Strategist at (W)right On Communications, recently published a pull-no-punches post on The HuffPo Blog about the love/hate relationship between journalists and public relations professionals, and why the hate part of the equation is pretty darn unfair. We've all seen the disparaging tweets and snide blogs that journalists casually let fly about PR pros, and sometimes that scorn is earned. There are definitely people in public relations who are clumsy, clueless and waste the media's time. But that's not the majority of us, so we shouldn't all be painted with the same brush. All you have to do is search Google for "bad press release" and you'll find plentiful examples of PR gone wrong. What journalists need to remember is for every irrelevant or poorly-written pitch they receive, there are many others that are on-target (even if the timing doesn't always fit into their editorial schedule) and handled professionally. PR continues to exist because it works, and journalists would have to do a lot more work themselves to find sources and stories without the help of public relations.