- Help A Reporter Out
Help A Report Out (or Haro).com is a free version of Profnet. Started by Peter Shankman, this great service is growing greatly based on word of mouth. Frankly, if it’s free and a way to pitch stories to journalists, us PR folks are on it faster than flies on shit.
So it saddened me when I saw this in a recent Haro newsletter:
This morning, I got a pitch (as did MANY of my key journalists on HARO) about the rumor that Matthew Broderick cheated on Sarah Jessica Parker, and offering me a celebrity life coach to talk about it. Within five minutes, I got emails from about 10 journalists, all asking why got the same email, as well. See, most journalists on HARO use specific HARO addresses. So they know where the pitch was coming from. Totally off-topic, totally inappropriate, totally unacceptable.
Alas, Nancy Mure, Chris Burres, and the rest of WOW Media will no longer be allowed on the HARO list. I won’t sit here and let reporters get totally off topic pitches from publicists who simply don’t get it, or worse, don’t care. I don’t care that other lists don’t care that you spam journalists. This is MY list. Don’t like it? See ya.
Please folks, let’s not kill a good thing by using this fabulous service to harvest emails. Granted, there are too many people who consider them “public relations professionals” because all it requires is an email address and the ability to type. I’m glad that Peter swiftly took them off his list. Hopefully this deters other folks from doing it, but why do I think this won’t be the first or last instance of this.
Sigh, maybe I can wish?
Related post:
PR Spam: Ten Points for Thought
4 Comments
July 26, 2008 at 01:56
For as long as I own the list, I’ll dump those who pitch off topic every single time.
July 28, 2008 at 02:49
Cece — good for Peter. The fewer “spray and pray” folks out there, the better for the rest of us.
Thanks Peter for setting this up!
August 1, 2008 at 04:34
[...] PR agencies (or poorly trained PR practitioners) continue to spam people, giving PR people a bad name despite others’ best [...]
September 16, 2008 at 23:47
I saw the same thing on HARO. It just baffles me that anyone would think to spam pitch these reporters–they know what they’re looking for and used the service for very specific things, it doesn’t make sense to approach them with other topics!