The Luminaria Media Blog

A group calling themselves the Yes Men pulled off an elaborate prank yesterday, passing out over 1 million free copies of a very authentic-looking New York Times — only it was dated July 4, 2009, and its lead headline was “Iraq War Ends.” The BBC article noted the operation took six months of planning and many volunteers to pull it off. In a nod to the Times’ motto, the fake paper declared it contained “all the news we hope to print.”

One of those stories they hoped to print — on a website version that also faithfully recreated the real thing — was “Public Relations Industry Forecasts a Series of Massive Layoffs.” In too-broad brushstrokes, it speaks of well-financed PR giants hyping Philip Morris and selling Americans on going to war. I’m all for good satire, but bristled at this depiction of public relations.

The fake article includes a quote that’s particularly galling — “P.R. companies have been doing whatever it takes to maximize their profit.” That’s certainly news to me. Step inside my office and let me tell you a little about the PR I do.

I’m in the third year of running my firm. I help people who I know are deserving, hard-working people — authors, entrepreneurs, non-profit directors, and educators — get their message out to an audience ready to hear them via a media working on deadlines to deliver news. I talk to the media, but I also help my clients articulate their visions and understand why they’re doing what they’re doing. By focusing on how they present themselves, they get a clearer sense of why they do what they do.

I have great days where I connect clients to reporters, resulting in stories that convey what I’d hope they’d convey. I have frustrating days where all my calls go to voicemail, where I lose a round of edits to a computer glitch, where I’m not as productive as I’d hoped to be. I had one banner day this summer where I stepped off the plane at JFK and my cell phone decided to die on the spot. (Just weeks before, I’d installed Skype. God bless Skype. Skype saved me until I could make it to a Sprint store and sit through a needlessly-elaborate reprogramming ritual, but that’s another story.) But I have never had a day where I have rubbed my hands together in Mr. Burnsian glee, plotting to maximize profits and dupe an unsuspecting nation.

Certainly, no matter what side of the aisle you’re on, there are plenty of things to be cynical about. But PR firms like mine — where I make my living on a love of all things media, my natural inclination to write, and sheer perseverance — are not one of those things to be cynical about. Especially not for people who tout themselves as the Yes Men.

You might have missed it among all the exciting election news of the campaign’s last few weeks — the Christian Science Monitor has decided to stop its print edition in April, becoming the first major newspaper in the U.S. to convert from print and online editions to online only. They’re even advertising a “treeless” subscription option to get readers used to the idea.

I still love the feel of a newspaper, and one of my favorite things to do on Sunday is to work through a Statesman or a New York Times section-by-section. But the reality is that I’m much more prone to read an article online these days than in the print edition. When a client does appear in a print edition, I’m thinking about some quality time with my scanner, whereas an online appearance by a client typically comes to me via Google Alert. The Monitor’s more a trendsetter than an anomaly, here, I’d think — it feels like we’re moving away from paper. Not immediately, of course, but it’s coming.

I was on a very interesting conference call last week set up by Peter Shankman, who is known in PR circles these days for his HARO (Help A Reporter Out) e-mail service. HARO is like Profnet in that it helps match PR people with media people looking for story sources, but it’s free and is a little sassier than Profnet. (And I mean that as a complement.)

The call featured a quartet of media people from high-profile news sources (think New York Times, AP), talking about what they liked and disliked about PR people. It reinforced some things we already know about media attitudes toward PR — they like us generally, they wouldn’t be half as informed without us, but we do some things that annoy them. We can be pushy. They really hate getting pitches on topics completely unrelated to what they cover. They can see when we’re calling them via the magic of Caller ID, and if we call them a lot, they tend to notice that. They obviously can’t get to every email, even though they’d like to respond. They all seemed to agree that if it’s been a week and they haven’t responded, it’s because they’re not interested in the story.

Principled PR practitioners know all this, but without hearing a “no” from a reporter or producer, we have to assume the answer is “maybe,” or we’ve sent them the rare e-mail that has fizzled into the ether before reaching its destination, or that they seemly have missed it in the barrage of e-mail they typically receive.

Why do we keep going until we hear the word “no?”

In a word: thoroughness. You want to honor your client. You have researched media outlets and media directories to come up with a list of people you believe will at least want to hear your pitch. You know that PR is sometimes beholden to the law of averages — many will hear the pitch and find it interesting, but only a few have the space and the editorial calendar and the gut feeling allowing them to move forward and transform your pitch into coverage.

I’m fine with “no.” I don’t take “no” personally. It’s disappointing to hear sometimes, especially when I see how happy my client and the media outlet would be together, but it’s part of the information I need to do my job efficiently — and perhaps more importantly, to help the media do its job efficiently.

I promise you that if I hear “no” on a story idea, I won’t come back tomorrow with some “fresh new angle” I didn’t think of earlier. I know that would land me in, as one of my colleagues coined it, the “bozo bin.” I don’t want to be there. No self-respecting PR person wants to be there.

It’s okay to tell me “no.” Of course, I’d prefer to hear “yes.” I’m even fine with “I’ll hang onto it and might use it later.” I’ll even believe you mean that! But hearing nothing is harder than hearing “no.”