From the Dark Side

A public-relations exec gives the view from the other side of the clipboard.

We know. We know exactly how you feel about us. We're the constant irritants in your lives: the perky, overpaid, overdressed, time-wasting, uninformed roadblocks who plant ourselves in your way. We're the sycophantic tricksters who drown you in emails, faxes and phone calls. We boast half-truths and inflated claims, and each day we attempt to lead you off your earnest course of journalistic truth and down our deviously devised paths of hype and lies. We are the dark side of journalism.

We are the PR professionals.

And it's true that there are some in PR who resemble this unflattering stereotype. But there are also reporters who fit every cliché: curmudgeons with crooked glasses and frayed cuffs who rely heavily on Lexis-Nexis for information and sources for free meals. Of course they're the small minority of journalists, and, likewise, the majority of PR professionals are not nefarious muses attempting to draw your journalistic boats into the rocks. Most in PR are consummate professionals, people who understand the journalistic process, contribute to it greatly, and can do a lot to make the reporter's job easier. Getting past the stereotypes, learning what PR professionals do, and establishing solid working relationships with key reps can only be an advantage for honest, hardworking journalists—because, frankly, you want the information, we have it, and we’d love to give it to you.

So here I am, an emissary from the Dark Side, to give you a look inside the world on the other side of the pitch and to help you understand how good PR can be a good tool for you. I want to give you real information about what we do and how we work, while trying to dispel many of the myths that surround my profession.

Here's one of my favorite myths, one I hear from journalists regularly: All PR professionals are very stupid.

The truth is that some of us are stupid. But, admit it, there are dummies in every profession—even journalism. And though there are some stupid, chirpy PR professionals representing companies big and small, the important thing for you to understand is that many of the inept pitches you receive are the result of an unfortunate hierarchical inversion that exists in most PR firms: Typically, the most junior members of a team are the ones charged with the difficult task of media pitching. This is more prevalent in agencies than at in-house PR departments, where the work gets done by a smaller group of people.

The way it works in most agency settings is that the more senior you get the less contact you have with reporters and editors. These higher-level people—the ones with the intelligence and experience—spend most of their time managing staff, clients, budgets, and strategies. The extremely sensitive and important but often thankless job of media outreach is thus left to those least able to perform it. I know it doesn’t make sense for all that work to end up in the hands of the least experienced employee, but that’s how it goes.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that all PR pitches are coming from inexperienced people, that the story doesn’t actually have legs, or that the pitch is all there is. And there's more extensive information you can get just by asking.

In most cases, the initial pitch, unless it’s an exclusive or has special circumstances, is usually a way to broadly disseminate top-line information about an organization’s achievements and the follow-up call is the screening process to see who bites. If you do bite, then the construction of your story will be overseen by a more senior PR professional, and you will be put in touch with the company executives who will give you tons of information as well as greater insight into the company, the industry, and the context of the pitch.

So it’s not that we're stupid; it’s just that the first call usually comes from someone young, a junior staffer learning the ropes in order to move to the next level. Persevere through that, be a little kind and understanding to him or her (you were just starting out once yourself, after all), and you'll end up working with more senior people on your actual story.

And here's another myth: PR professionals are all on a dishonest mission to promote their own "angles" and to keep reporters from the real stories.

Well, yeah, of course we have angles. It’s our job to get our clients in the middle of stories. But you're always looking for fresh takes, so why shouldn't we try to make that take about our clients? So, sure, we'll provide you with all the facts that we believe support our stories, and, no, we're not going to promote the possible negative angles. It's our job, after all, to try to get you to believe in our story and sell it to your readers to promote the causes of our clients.

But that's not dishonest; it’s just sales. And it’s the naïve journalist who doesn’t look beyond the original pitch for the deeper story. That doesn't mean the truth is negative, it just means there is always more to it than presented in a 10-second pitch. Would you buy a car without test-driving it? A pair of jeans without trying them on? Of course not, and we don't expect that you'll accept our pitches and write our suggested stories without some due diligence. You need to do your own research, and you should ask the PR professional for all the information he or she has on the subject, because there is usually quite a lot more. And, while we might not advertise certain aspects of our stories, we're not going to lie to you about them when asked, either.

The initial pitch is just the surface of the story, like the exterior of the car you see zooming through the mountains in a commercial or the jeans you see in a magazine looking fabulous on a supermodel. It doesn’t mean that in reality the car is a lemon or that the jeans actually make regular people look fat, it’s just that these products, like our pitches, are positioned to shine the most positive light on their selling qualities. It's the reporter’s job to look beyond the glare.

I know you're afraid that if you give us an inch, we'll take that proverbial mile and suck you irreversibly into the Dark Side. You're concerned you won't be able to take part in journalists' traditional PR-bashing bonding rituals. But don't worry: Most of us really do want to use our powers for good instead of evil, and good reporter-PR relationships can be an asset to you throughout your career. And, believe me, we get a kick out of a little PR bashing ourselves.

Loren Pomerantz is the founder and president of Combined Forces Communications, a full-service public relations agency servicing clients in the consumer and business-to-business sectors, as well as providing training seminars for employees of corporate communications departments and public relations agencies. Pomerantz is based in New York City, and she'll expose the truth behind PR myths for mediabistro.com on the first Thursday of every month.