Media relations

For 42 years, Essence has been addressing the issues of importance for African-American women. Targeting Black women between the ages of 18 and 49, Essence is now more than a magazine. It’s a website with about one million unique monthly visitors, a music festival, and a special “Hot Hair” issue launched in 2010.

In Mediabistro’s latest “How to Pitch for PR” feature, we offer tips for getting your story into the pages of Essence.

“Black women come to Essence to get inspiration, insight, and relevant information about our culture they cannot find anywhere else,” said executive editor Vanessa Bush.

For more information about pitching Essence, click here. [Subscription required. Not an Avant Guild member? Click here for more info.]

And, ICYMI, we recently spoke with Essence icon Mikki Taylor and the magazine’s new EIC Constance C.R. White for MediabistroTV’s Media Beat program. Click here to check out those interviews on our YouTube channel.

New figures from the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism further demonstrate the financial hurdles the newspaper industry faces: for every dollar newspapers earn digitally, they’re losing seven in print. (PaidContent offers a detailed breakdown of the study.)

“The papers that are succeeding are those that have pushed harder to change their sales staffs, have pushed digital even at the risk of putting less effort into the old categories that pay the bills, have taken more risks — have fought against the deep ‘inertia’ that many of the executives describe,” said Tom Rosenstiel, Pew project director, in an email to the NY Times.

As the number of print readers has declined, many outlets have beefed up online content and tried to add online advertisers. Moreover, paywalls are becoming more popular.

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Today on Essence.com, there’s a “Street Style” photo gallery from the “Celebrate Black HERstory” event.

On Clutch, they pose this question: “Do we still need Black leaders?”

On The Root, they’re talking about Bobby and Whitney.

And on HuffPost Black Voices, there’s a story about an organization, the Black and Missing Foundation that’s focused on locating “missing people of color.”

As Michelle Flowers Welch, CEO and founder of Flowers Communications Group said in our Women Leaders profile yesterday, there’s been a dramatic increase in outreach to multicultural audiences, including African-American consumers. The examples above show the wide variety of issues that outlets targeting African Americans are tackling. We talked with a few experts to find out about some of the other trends and hot topics that are of interest.

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All You is all about reaching its target audience: women between the ages of 25 and 54, many of them moms, who want to save money. With that in mind, all editorial coverage is seen through that “prism,”  says executive editor Susan Spencer. Moreover, the magazine uses its vast database, its distribution methods, and its other daily efforts to make its tagline — “Enjoy life for less” – a reality for its one million-plus readers.

In the latest “How to Pitch for PR” feature, Mediabistro takes a closer look at the ins and outs of pitching All You. According Spencer, the ubiquity of sale sites and other deals options have drawn publicists and their editorial staff closer together.

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Since its launch in 2004, Inked magazine”s original mission remains intact – to create a high-end entertainment and fashion magazine built around tattoo culture.

As a men’s lifestyle book, Inked wants the basics: fashion, booze, car, art. But make sure to dial the focus on to tattoos. ”People who don’t know Inked might think it’s just a bunch of pictures of tattoos where that’s not true,” says editor Rocky Rakovic. “Just think of us like Maxim plus tattoos.”

In this ”How To Pitch for PR” feature, Mediabistro finds out just how going from pitch to publish is a collaborative effort at this glossy. If your client has a connection to the world of tats, learn how the editors will work with you to craft your story.

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Disney grand opening, 1955

During a recent expedition to Disneyland, it came to my attention that the grand opening of the park in 1955 was televised live. What?!? Yes, with Art Linkletter as a host, ABC and more than 1,000 journalists covered the story of the theme park’s opening. What an incredible feat of pure PR.

Was Disneyland news? I suppose if there were not many theme parks, it might be news. So when is a grand opening newsworthy? Why is another Apple store, the latest in New York’s Grand Central Station worth covering?

It reminds me of a most upsetting event when I was a newspaper reporter and a grizzled veteran colleague – a guy who drank only scotch – was called upon to cover the opening of a Krispy Kreme doughnut shop on his beat. He threw a tantrum of swearing and slamming things and decrying the doughnut people like the newsroom had never seen. To him, covering an opening was at best fluff and at worst working for the dark side.

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Jim Romenesko has spoken with a press pool full of journalists who report on the craziness of dealing with the Fox News PR department. More specifically, dealing with the shadowy figure that is Irena Briganti, the Fox News and Fox Business SVP of media relations.

Much like Nikki Finke, photos of Briganti are hard to come by, Romenesko writes. But her presence is certainly felt if you’re ever trying to do a story about Fox or interview one of its journalists. Reporters tell tales of blacklists and being “iced”; of insults and transgressions that happened when they weren’t looking.

Not all of the criticism is negative. And, on a certain level, reporters seem to realize that working with the Fox PR team is like working with any other — publicists are advocating for their clients and you shouldn’t expect otherwise. But the tales these reporters tell fly in the face of the common PR goal of building strong relationships with journalists.

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Pitching a story today? Of course you are. But are you doing it well?

After the jump, Joe Donatelli, L.A.-based journalist, former editor of several men’s sites, and current editor of The Humor Columnist, offers five tips collected from his experiences and those of his colleagues about how best to conduct your outreach. They’re basic, but a reminder never hurts. To these we would only add these pieces of advice for pitching PRNewser:

-Keep it simple. Sometimes a cool picture or one interesting aspect of a campaign is all it takes to grab our attention.

-Please pick one email address and pitch that address only. Sending a note to prnewser@mediabistro.com will suffice. If you want to send a second note a couple of days later just to be sure your email didn’t drown in our inbox, that’s totally fine. Occasionally something does get past us and a quick follow up is actually appreciated.

-Call when it’s important. Want to follow up? No need. Want to make sure I got your email? I got it. Want to see if I need to speak with someone? If I need to, I’ll ask. I’m not shy. We can use email to schedule interviews, or I’ll call you if there’s something that is more easily handled with a quick conversation. The other stuff is just annoying.

Click through for more.

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TheDailyMeal.com launched in January 2011, raised $6 million in funding by August, was reaching two million readers by the end of the first year, and has expanding to include an e-commerce offering through a partnership with Cooking.com.

“We want publicists to understand our mission: harvesting the delicious and discarding the mundane, being the friend on the inside, delivering a fresh take on dining news and trends, discovering and reporting with a sense of fun and curiosity,” says Valaer Murray, managing editor of the site. Did you get all that?

In the latest “How to Pitch for PR” feature, Mediabistro gets the scoop about getting your story in front of The Daily Meal audience. Editors are looking for a wide range of pitches, but there are a few things you might want to keep in mind before sending over your idea.

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After 109 years, Popular Mechanics is still about science and technology, though the science and technology have changed greatly.

Still deputy editor Jerry Beilinson says Popular Mechanics is a general interest magazine covering everything from plumbing to outer space. Actually, stories that help homeowners are among those that the magazine’s editors seek most from publicists.

In today’s “How to Pitch for PR” feature, Mediabistro talks with Popular Mechanics about how best to communicate with the magazine and what stories are most appropriate.

“It’s a really broad subject matter with a coherent world view,” he says.

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