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When PR clients talk about timing for pitching journalists on a story idea, be it the launch of a new product or filing of a lawsuit, every so often someone will ask about whether we should issue an “embargoed” press release. For those...

The most common reason clients tell me they’re nervous about being interviewed by a print or online journalist is that they worry they could be misquoted. Or at very least, the resulting story won’t accurately portray them or their...

It’s true enough, as a once-famous psychologist said, that if the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail. As a publicist, I admit I often see PR as a useful way to promote one’s goods or services, as...

Most PR consultants who aren’t too dumb or dishonest will admit the following has regrettably happened to them at least a few times: you pitch a solid story idea to a journalist and get tepid or no response, only to see a colleague at the...

No one likes making mistakes. For journalists, goof-ups aren’t just embarrassing; they’re potential career poison. As someone who has been on both sides of journalistic screwups – as a reporter and now as a publicist – I empathize with...

Since I left journalism more than two decades ago to work as a publicist, I’ve witnessed many reasonably sane and nice people behave oddly around journalists. To be fair, journalists are often a bit weird. Among the more common – and at...

As a publicist who does a little freelance writing on the side, I empathize with both professions. I pitch journalists on ideas involving my PR clients. And a fair number of fellow PR practitioners pitch me, hoping I’ll write about their...

In a recent blog post, I wrote about why press releases suck. Lest you think this is an apology, I still think they suck. But I forgot to mention a couple halfway decent reasons to use them beside those I’d written about earlier. First,...

I’m pretty sure that if American statesman Benjamin Franklin ever tried his hand at PR, he would have said that the only certainties in life were death, taxes and clients asking him to write press releases. To be fair, the last bit –...

There are many good reasons to use AI to write content of all kinds. It’s free (so far), absurdly fast and easy, and mostly turns out servicable prose (or poetry, screenplays, etc.). Only hitch – and so far, a big one – is it typically...