Not all my professional life is really spent interviewing Lucy Lawless and Renee O'Connor, okay? Some of it involves doing stuff like trying to get people who DO. NOT. WANT. to talk to me, to talk to me. People who know the article I'm writing is not in their best interest and really, if they had the brains they were born with, would in fact, not give me the interview at all.
But a lot of it also involves getting press releases from companies and organizations - most of them large corporations and major non-profits with full time PR staffs and huge budgets - who are falling all over themselves trying to get me to talk to them, who want to talk to me for hours, who are absolutely overflowing with the milk of human kindness for me.
So to them, I have one request: Put your freaking press releases on your website when you send them out. Put them on a blog or a press release engine and INCLUDE THE URL IN THE EMAILED PRESS RELEASE.
Because the odds I'm going to regurgitate your entire release are zero, but I might excerpt it and then link to the whole thing.
If I could.
Instead, I call you and ask, "Is this release online anywhere?"
Silence. "I don't think so. Let me check."
They return. "No, no it's not."
WHY ISN'T IT? PUT IT THERE. DO IT NOW.
That is all.
I'll remember that when you interview me when I've gotten my academy award. ;)
Travis
Posted by: Travis | 12 February 2007 at 02:41 PM
I have a problem explaining why this is important to the media spokestwit at my "day job." No lie. He doesn't get it. I get his releases for posting onlin a day or two (or more) after he FAXES them out.
A fax. How very 20th century ...
Posted by: Gina | 12 February 2007 at 02:59 PM
YES! NOT PUTTING YOUR RELEASES ONLINE MAKES BABY JESUS CRY!
Fax? Fax? What is this please?
Posted by: Christie | 12 February 2007 at 03:04 PM
Travis, when you win your Academy Award I will put a press release online for you myself, LOL!
Posted by: Christie | 12 February 2007 at 03:06 PM
Woohoo!!!
That's one thing to cross of my to-do list. Of course this will happen, as soon as I get the agent who will get me the audition for the film that will win me my award, and after I kill the person who actually got the job so I could replace him. Baby steps ... but it's all in a forward diretion. ;)
I think.
I wonder if my medication is wearing off?
Travis
Posted by: Travis | 12 February 2007 at 06:12 PM