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The Bad Pitch blog has an interesting post on a new site called the Angry Journalist.

If nothing else, it goes to show that PR and Journalism are pretty much two cheeks of the same ar*e.  Without PR folk, journalists would have to do  good deal of digging to get the stories/statistics behind brands (assuming they could get access) and without journo’s it’s a big goodbye to PR ‘fluffies’ (god that turn of phrase breaks me balls). 

I must say, it staggers me that not every PR company insists that their new recruits spend at least some time as a journalist (I know we do).  After all, how can you craft a worthwhile story if you’ve never been the person on the other end of the phone?

It also makes me realise that journalists can often mouth off about PR folk without comeback (after all, invariably we need them - so the balance of power is heavily wieghted).  PR folk on the other hand need to bite their lips - just in case.  I wonder what the angry journalists would make of the shafting we received I wrote about here?

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A marvellous email arrived in the office via response source today.

A freelance journalist is popping down to London for the weekend ‘to do a review’ is wondering …. let me copy the body of the email:

Could a lovely PR person offer me any of the following? (In return for a mention in my review).

2 tickets for Alicia Keys at the o2 arena this Friday night.

2 tickets for Hairspray the musical on Saturday night

In other words, show me a good weekend for free and I might, just might mention you … Who says journalists don’t need PR people?

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Having spent time as both a journalist and PR consultant, I reserve the right to get royally frustrated when journalists hide behind ‘editorial judgement’ to steal stories I place.

Here’s a case in point - no names mentioned as I’ve lodged an official complaint … 

A well known commercial London TV news programme received my story based on research of my clients data.  Basically, we notice that they were selling more stuff to an entirely different consumer than they initially anticipated.  I wrote a release with a strong, substantiated top line based on my clients research data and offered up two very compelling case studies.

When the TV news piece was on television my client didn’t get single mention.  They used my top line but didn’t substantiate it by using our data (to avoid mentioning my client) and then they went on to happily use the to case studies I provided and arranged for them - again no mention.

Now, I worked at the BBC for a long time.  I understand about the editorial integrity needed in mentioning commercial organisations.  However, this amounted to theft.  Without us looking at the clients data and noticing the interesting sales avenues - there was no story.  For an organisation to run it and not mention us shows a total lack of understanding about editorial integrity - in their eagerness not to mention us, they ran a story that didn’t back up the top line they were using.

We shall not be selling in any more stories to that particular organisation!

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