Ah, yes. That time of the year when all the shops start putting on Christmas decorations, and the Black Unicorn PR team gets together to unearth all the journalist pet peeves from the previous quarter.
Without further ado, here are some pet peeves to learn from:
July
Zoe Kleinman works for the BBC, which means she gets a lot of spammy pitches, which means she can bring us lots of useful pet peeves. Here, one reminding PRs (though, let’s face it, those PRs will never see this tweet) about her actual beat.
This one we don’t even get. Will they ask for help with their press release next? Hello! You are there to help journalists, not the other way around.
Rob Scammell from UKTN making it very clear that journalists are not (just) in it for the traffic.
Mary Ann Azevedo from TechCrunch highlights a strange trend here. How can you introduce yourself without saying your name? If it’s intentional, are you hiding something? Tip: Your company name should be one of the first things you mention. In fact, hyperlink it to your website to make it easier to continue researching.
A classic. Spread your bets, diversify your stock, right? Nope, doesn’t work the same way. This is kind of basic though, in PR. Unforgivable.
Matthew Boyle from Bloomberg revealing a sad reality. Many people doing PR have no clue how to do PR. Zero understanding of journalism if you pitch like this.
Katie Prescott from The Times with a journalist pet peeve that is not unusual at all in tech. Companies that struggle to explain what they do. In plain English. In a few words. In a straightforward way. You get the point.
August
Katy Docherty at The Sun, of all places, finds this pitch to potentially be “attention grabbing gone too far”. OK fine, we agree. Getting an email open is important, but there are ways of doing it without freaking out your recipients.
Automated email follow ups. Sounds like one of those genius ideas that turn into total disasters. Is this what happens when you combine the worst of PR and email marketing?
Haje Kamps would love founders to be prepared to answer questions. He would also love to hear from companies who aren’t just copies of other companies. And so would most journalists.
We do hope that someone blasted a template to a completely wrong set of people, and not that they seriously thought Zoe would help them write a sponsored post. OK, if you really need us to spell it out for you: for advertorials and sponsored content, do not email journalists. Check out the commercial contact options at the media outlet. Bonus tip: do a minimum amount of research.
September
Dean Takahashi from VentureBeat recommends sticking to your embargo time. If you change it, you might get your article taken down (for good) eventually.
Dan Taylor from Tech.eu reminding PR folks about the meaning of an exclusive. Hint: only one journalist gets the exclusive. Don’t combine it with embargos, or you could face (what Germans call) a shitstorm.
Helen Coffey at The Independent confirms that journalists are not fans of made up words. Also, she likes Notting Hill.
Haje from TechCrunch, who is winning our journalist pet peeves competition in Q3, is a fan of keyboard shortcuts; not so much a fan of small change in terms of crypto news.
Dan, aka Sensorpunk, hitting back at those who abuse the invention of the mail merge. Journalist pet peeves bonus points for the fun factor.
Zoe Kleinman from the BBC can see through the bull. A good reminder that PR should reflect the best of your company, not a fake reality of your company.
Haje in action again, this time confronted with a PR rep from hell. We’re surprised the conversation actually got that far. Holy trinity of PR fails here: no research, no common sense, old news.
Arielle Pardes from The Information highlights the lack of focus in the pitching strategy of most PRs. Wait a second, what strategy? This leads to spammed inboxes. 71 emails is nothing, though, we’ll be waiting for an update on the number on her next pet peeve!
We really want to use that Lord of the Rings meme of Boromir here. “One does not simply pitch a funding story without the amount”. It might work for some, but probably not TechCrunch.
Amanda Silberling at TechCrunch highlights how bad our industry can be. Is it worth it for that one client win? Luckily startup PR can only take spamming that far. Or can it?
Did we miss out on a cool journalist pet peeve? Are you also on the hunt? Let us know on our Twitter, or tag us when you see one, and we’ll include it in the next roundup!
Want to learn even more? Check out some of our previous journalist pet peeves blog posts:
Journalist pet peeves on Twitter: Q2 2022
Journalist pet peeves on Twitter: Q1 2022
Journalist pet peeves on Twitter: Q2 2021
Journalist pet peeves on Twitter: March 2021
Journalist pet peeves on Twitter: February 2021
Journalist pet peeves on Twitter: January 2021
