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Building strong relationships with business editors was described as the royal route to coverage, five editors told about 50 PR people last night at the New York office of MSLGroup, a unit of Publicis. They did not give out their business cards or provide phone numbers or emails.
Business writers usually reach out to PR people they have come to know and trust, panel members said. Breaking into this inner circle is the challenge presented to PR people.
Contact points for one of the editors, Crystal Lau, producer of CNBC's "Closing Bell," may be available if a PR person joins premium LinkedIn and pays $29.99 a month.
Chapter president Bill Doescher has been asked to supply the emails of the editors if they are publicly available.
Rubin Ramirez, assignment editor and head of video, TheStreet, looks for “two sentences telling me what the story is about followed by three bullet points."
He wants to be able to grasp the pitch “within 30 seconds.” The name of a contact and client availability are what he wants rather than “two pages of extraneous details.”
Sending pitches as early in the day as possible was urged by the editors including Lau and Kevin Chupka, producer, Yahoo! Finance.
Sending a pitch in the afternoon is a mistake because other PR firms may have already contacted the editors, it was said.
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Telling an editor that a story is exclusive when it isn’t was advised against. John Kell, senior reporter, Fortune, said “It’s insulting when you give us a story and then give it to a competitor.” PR people also have to follow the beats editors may be working on since these change, he said.
Timely, Thoughtful, Clever Pitches Work
The editors agreed that email is the best way to reach them although such information was not provided at last night’s session.
Send editors lists of the clients of the PR firm and links to videos, was other advice. The editors would like to see evidence that the client can speak well on TV, said Lau.
Do lots of research before approaching an editor and make sure you spell his or her name correctly, was other advice. One small mistake can cause an editor to trash the pitch, it was implied.
Advised against was reminding a reporter of an article he or she wrote six months ago and trying to connect this with what a client is currently pitching.
“Follow what I do and pitch me a couple of ideas that will form a bond,” said Charisse Jones, who covers business travel for USA Today.
“If I don’t respond after the second time I’ve seen it, I’m just not that interested, it’s nothing personal, said Chupka.
Members paid $60 for the event and non-members, $80. Party sandwiches, fruit and trays of cookies and brownies were served as well as water and soda. The chapter had net assets of $166,368 as of Dec. 31, 2013 and cash of $156,457, the latest figures available on GuideStar. Biggest operating expense was $76,038 management fee to the Charles Group, Fairfield, N.J. The Big Apple Awards generated $1146,985 in 2013. Costs were $90K.
Trump Media & Technology Group today reported a $58.2M net loss on $4.1M in 2023 revenues, a disclosure that drove its stock price down 22.6 percent to $47.96.
Barry Pollack, an attorney at Wall Street’s Harris St. Laurent & Wechsler, has registered Julian Assange as a client with the Justice Dept. “out of an abundance of caution.”
Paramount Global to slash 800 jobs in what chief executive Bob Bakish calls part of an effort to “return the company to earnings growth"... Rolling Stone editor-in-chief Noah Shachtman is exiting at the end of the month due to disagreements with chief executive Gus Wenner over the direction the magazine is taking... The New York Times broke the $1 billion barrier in annual revenue from digital subscriptions in 2023... Press Forward is investing more than $500 million to strengthen local newsrooms.
The majority of news articles are read within the first three days of publication, according to a recent report.
The Los Angeles Times gives pink slips to 115 people or 20 percent of its newsroom staff... TIME is also laying off about 30 employees, which is approximately 15 percent of its editorial staff... The Baltimore Banner, which was launched by Stewart Bainum in 2022 after he failed to buy the Baltimore Sun, added 500 subscribers per day in the three days following Sinclair Broadcast Group's deal to purchase the Sun.
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