Approaching Journalists: Do's & Don'ts

Check out a video of a panel consisting of media who talk to entrepreneurs about the right way to approach journalists - what works and what doesn't. On the panel was Fred Vogelstein from Wired, John Cook from the Seattle PI, Michael Arrington from TechCrunch, Rebecca Buckman from the WSJ, and Tricia Duryee from the Seattle Times.

Advice from Arrington who talks about the TechCrunch20 submissions for their upcoming conference in September, says "have a really cool product. If the product is great, you'll likely get written up. Get rid of all the marketing speak that you've learned."

Rebecca prefers pitches via email. She says that if a trend story happens somewhere else, that they're likely not going to do something on it. Having lived and worked abroad, she is interested in global trends.

While the WSJ may want exclusives, Arrington says he doesn't care as much about getting it early, but he doesn't want it 'second' -- in other words, get it to him the same time as everyone else. She elaborates, "the kind of scoop we're interested in is really a concept scoop about a new trend, or a company that is making waves in a specific area." John looks for financial milestones of a company.

As for using a PR firm or not? Says Fred, "some are very well connected to us and a handful of them can invite me to a dinner and because they take their time to choose their clients carefully, I'll probably go.

If you go with a firm that has really good relationships, that's a good thing, but not necessarily just to offload work. I get tons of pitches from firms, most of them come from people who are 23 years old reading from a script. When I ask basic questions, they often can't answer them."

They all look for good sources, i.e., smart entrepreneurs, smart VCs, etc. Fred says that this is a great thing for us, because "we can't be everywhere." When Arrington wrote about this, he got slammed for paying more attention to trusted sources, yet over the years I've seen journalists do this -- both old school and new school.

It doesn't mean that you have jeopardize your ethics but if you have a good working relationship with someone you have built up trust with over time, a PR person or an entrepreneur, why wouldn't you pay closer attention?