By Leo Valiquette
As a former journalist, nothing warranted a head shake more than PR folks who weren’t interested when opportunity came knocking.
Sure, there are always situations in which a journalist is a burr under the saddle, pricking away at tender spots that an organization would rather keep out of the public eye. But I’m talking about positive media opportunities or, in some cases, followups on pitches that have been made by the PR practitioners themselves. As a journalist, I personally experienced situations in which a PR person would make a pitch, then disappear or stonewall when we expressed an interest in pursuing the opportunity.
Michael Hammond, a reporter at the Kitchener-Waterloo Record and former colleague from the Ottawa Business Journal, pinged me today about three separate examples of apparent PR apathy towards the media this week that caused a great deal of teeth grinding and hair pulling in his shop. And again, these were positive story opportunities that were brushed off.
I invited Michael to appear on our blog with a guest piece about these incidents, but he was so incensed he had already published his rant on the Record’s blog, which you can read at A necessary evil.
The moral of the story? Take all the good press you can get. Duh!
