Last week, online retail behemoth Amazon received the kind of PR boost that any brand outside the Republican Party would kill for: President Obama visited its massive Chattanooga warehouse and used his media megaphone to promote the company for creating jobs fit for every politician’s favorite fallback character: the “middle class” American.

This is all well and good, but Amazon’s recent reputation management challenges are far more complicated…and less complimentary.

The real purpose of the President’s visit was to propose a bargain between the two political parties in which he would trade a cut in corporate tax rates for increased government investment in “education, training, and public works projects” designed to facilitate the creation of those precious middle class jobs. The event unsurprisingly attracted critiques of both the company and the President that highlight their unique PR struggles.

It’s true that Amazon’s planned hiring wave will create as many as 7,000 American jobs, but Obama’s visit raised several questions that the company would rather not address:

• Are these jobs truly “middle class?”
• Is Amazon the sort of company that will help strengthen the American economy at large?
• Will this PR stunt facilitate any truly meaningful political activity?

That’s easy: no, no, and…no.

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“Unique ideas often start with pitches, and many are surprising”, according to Breanne Heldman, New York bureau chief at Yahoo! Entertainment. She was speaking on a PRSA NY panel on Tuesday about placing entertainment stories.

Other panelists included::
• Lauren Brown, Site Director, Ok! Magazine.com
• James Chairman, New York Bureau Producer, E! News
• Erin Clements, Celebrity News Editor, The Huffington Post
• Paola Leva, News Director, In Touch Weekly
• Benjamin Wagner, Senior Vice President, MTV News

Below are their tips for breaking through the clutter with original, creative pitches leading to mutually productive relationships. Some appear self-evident, but may be worth repeating.

1.Celebrities promoting brands: These types of stories provide access, Clements said. The outlets will touch upon the brand tie-in, then cover the celebrity’s work. As Heldman added, sometimes it’s even funny, as when they interviewed a pregnant celebrity plugging a rum brand on St. Patrick’s day. All she could do was mention what she’d like to be drinking.

2.Exclusive content is highly desirable, or at least most media outlets prefer to receive it first. As Brown observed, “nothing is really exclusive online anymore, because once it goes online it’s fair game”. But if her site posts an item early on, their readers will share it and build the outlet’s own social media following.

3.Story extension ideas: Sending pitches to extend a big story running for several days is advisable. For example, it may be an expert who can speak about Angelina Jolie’s recent medical news, Heldman said.

4.Finding unique angles is critical, Clements noted. Brown wants the flexibility to add first person spin and avoid a cookie-cutter approach. As Wagner added, for MTV News, merely an announcement of a new album release is a non-starter. (Image at left courtesy of MTV News’ story, “Cannes Film Festival 2013: Our Must-See Movies”)

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Even Rodin, the French sculptor who created iconic images like The Thinker, (left) might have a hard time getting his opinions published in some media outlets today. That is, unless the artist also possessed a writing style with a strong viewpoint that was provocative or counterintuitive with a catchy, conversational tone.

Those were some of the pointers from the editorial panelists at a recent PCNY event on pitching opinion pieces, bylined and contributed content. Other desirable criteria include articles with compelling angles that are well sourced and grounded in facts. Self-serving or promotional pieces don’t make the cut. So if a sculptor like Rodin was intent on seeing his name in print or online, he’d be well advised to write about the fine arts category, not focus exclusively on his own masterpieces.

The panelists represented a broad array of digital and print outlets with varying degrees of difficulty for outside submissions to break through. These included: CNN Digital, Bloomberg View, Business Insider, The Huffington Post, Ad Age and The Muse. Of course the industries these media brands cover aren’t targeted or limited to art. They encompass categories ranging from politics and economics to technology, marketing, media, careers and lifestyle.

Each editor painted a brief picture of their outlet and provided tips for prospective guest contributors.

CNN Digital: The Opinion section of the site “hosts a wide range of views across the spectrum of politics, religion, arts and other areas”, explained Richard Galant, senior opinion editor. They only publish one or two outside submissions per day, and they want original, exclusive hooks to ongoing news stories.

Bloomberg View: Editorial board member Frank Wilkinson described the two-year old site as “a startup within a large news organization”. He said their op-ed page only takes selected outside contributors since they now produce more opinion related content in-house. Their core focus is the intersection of economics, finance, government and cultural issues, and they look for densely researched pieces.

Business Insider: The site has evolved, according to managing editor Jessica Liebman. There are now 15 sections, like technology, finance, retail, politics, sports, lifestyle, military and defense, with plans to add energy and healthcare. Their current focus is having quality contributors and selected bloggers post about newsy or fun topics.

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The biggest “must read” story making its way around the web this week is New York Magazine’s profile of BuzzFeed founder Jonah Peretti and his enviably successful approach to paid content.

To sum things up, Peretti, who also helped launch The Huffington Post, was a math student at MIT who grew fascinated with the concept of viral memes and later created BuzzFeed as a tool to identify and facilitate the spread of said memes via algorithm. His goal was to truly capture the magic behind “word of mouth” buzz (the cat GIFs and political reporting came later). Most of the Internet and quite a few of the biggest brands in the world agree that Peretti has uncovered a secret formula for creating native advertising that might just go viral. Here are some revelations from the profile:

• BuzzFeed editors work directly with marketing specialists from partner brands to create content in a “newsroom”-style environment.
• The vast majority of traffic for both BuzzFeed originals and paid posts comes from social sharing.
• The site’s most popular posts don’t go viral after a single big-name personality shares them — they’re simply picked up by several isolated individuals who share them in small groups (average nine Facebook friends) that spawn small “share” groups of their own.
• There’s a science to this. Peretti has literally devised a formula.

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We know it’s something of a stereotype that traditional and especially print media tend to take their time in arriving at/commenting on a hot story. Such is the case with The New York Times, which made waves this weekend by reporting on a phenomenon that PR and marketing folk already know quite well: paid or sponsored content.

We’re not saying that the many talented reporters at the Times have ignored the trend until now; this Media Decoder post regarding The Atlantic‘s Scientology advertorial scandal mentions the fact that BuzzFeed, The Huffington Post and other top web publishers already maintain sponsored content sections. But the weekend’s article does seem to be the first time the Times has deemed such content worthy of comment in print.

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We generally don’t think too much of “we got a new office” press releases unless that office happens to be ours, but we have to say Lambert, Edwards & Associates of Detroit chose a creative way of publicizing its recent move with this time-lapse video, which doubles as a love letter to the city:

And someone earned a mention on The Huffington Post too…

Well, this is certainly NOT a case of earned media: this week a Department of Justice filing covered by BuzzFeed revealed that the current Malaysian government hired PR firms to pay opinion writers at various publications throughout the United States, encouraging them to write op-eds denouncing their primary opponent.

The main purpose of the articles, published by magazines and websites ranging from The National Review and The Guardian to The Huffington Post, was to distinguish current Prime Minister Najib Razak from opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim by claiming that he is a moderate Muslim while Ibrahim is a militant Islamist. (Note: according to advocacy groups like Amnesty International, Razak’s government also has a long history of human rights violations like restricting freedom of speech and religion and executing political enemies. They also jailed Ibrahim on what many saw to be “trumped up” charges.)

This was perfect subject material for writers who wanted to push the message that moderation is the only way for Islamist political parties empowered by the recent “Arab Spring” movement to engage with the rest of the world. One of the writers even told BuzzFeed today that “It was actually a fairly standard PR operation”, though he lost his column after the relationship was revealed.

We’re not particularly familiar with Malaysian politics, but the fact that these op-ed writers didn’t feel the need to reveal the backers who were paying them to voice specific opinions is a perfect example of why “PR” is a bad word for many people.

In a breaking story that will surprise very few, sources close to Lance Armstrong confirm that he used his exclusive interview with Oprah Winfrey (taped yesterday) to admit that he took illegal, performance-enhancing substances throughout his cycling career–and that he plans to testify against officials who “encouraged” the practice.

Even as Armstrong confessed to what pretty much everyone suspected, he also seems to have hedged a bit, using the “everybody was doing it” defense to argue that he was not, in fact, a doping “ringleader”. Given his extremely aggressive PR efforts in denying all relevant accusations for years, we’re not quite sure anyone will buy that line–but he clearly made a strategic decision in the interest of saving what’s left of his multimillion dollar reputation. By testifying against others involved in the scandal, he hopes to overcome his lifelong ban from competitive sports so he can continue to compete in “triathalons and running events” while raising money for his charity.

This is obviously a big story, and some within the industry see it as a major PR win for Oprah, whose influence has been slipping of late as her OWN Network struggles to gain viewers and seeks media attention via moves like a partnership with The Huffington Post. Oprah clearly aims to make the most of the interview–she’s splitting it into two parts, and directly after its conclusion she tweeted:

Just wrapped with @lancearmstrongMore than 2 1/2 hours . He came READY!

— Oprah Winfrey (@Oprah) January 14, 2013

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We usually love the idea of two complementary brands coming together and doing great things, but when we first heard about the ongoing collaboration between Doritos and Taco Bell, we were a little skeptical.

We understand that these leaders in the “corn-based foods with ridiculously high levels of saturated fat” market appeal to the same audiences (namely drunk college kids and adults in a rush), but we wondered if a taco served inside a big Dorito dusted with nuclear red “cheese” would be a little too much.

We were very, very wrong: The Doritos Locos Tacos quickly became the best-selling item in the history of the Tex-Mex chain, which got mouths watering again this week with a Facebook post sort of announcing the pending release of the Cool Ranch version. We still can’t quite get over the fact that this simple post got 120,000 likes, 11,500 shares, and more than 8,000 comments.

The Huffington Post recently attempted to discern exactly why this co-branding exercise worked so well, and we have to agree with most of their points:

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Walmart–no stranger to bad press–made a rare PR decision to cease all communication with a major news outlet, announcing that it will no longer provide comment to The Huffington Post.

The retailer’s VP of communications, David Tovar, said in a statement that Walmart “made a decision not to participate in Huffington Post articles going forward due to the one-sided reporting and unfair and unbalanced editorial decisions made by Huffington Post reporters and editors”. Huffington Post’s executive business editor, Peter Goodman, accused Walmart of making a “false” assertion, and said he “can’t recall another company cutting off access in this fashion.”

Here, via Business Insider, are five specific reasons Walmart gave for its decision:

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