PR and business journalists

Norm Bell, the editor of the Hartford Business Journal, writes about the communications relationship between public relations professionals and business journalists.

Bell writes, “We find interesting ways to make errors. And we don’t need help.

“We’ve been wrestling with some problems associated with sloppy public relations work. When we wrote a web item for HBJ Today about a firm getting an increased federal contract, we got a call saying we had it wrong. While this was a new contract, it was actually for less than the old contract, a fact not in evidence in the firm’s original telling of the story. Another company put out a press release about a financial development yet seemed surprised when our story didn’t include a business unit that hadn’t been mentioned.

“We really do want to get it right and we’ll work with you toward that end. But give us a fighting chance to get it right the first time. Say what you mean and mean what you say. It’s a goal we strive to attain every day.

“Then there was the call from the unhappy state media relations guy who was objecting to an unflattering editorial characterization of his group’s handling of a situation.

“He seemed to want to quibble about semantics, whether answering the call meant literally picking up the phone or something broader. He regaled me with all the steps that had been taken to win the deal. But, in the final analysis, he had to admit, they hadn’t closed the deal.”

Read more here.