What I do find annoying are those companies who insist on sending press releases by surface mail. Invariably, the info is old news by the time it makes it to my postal box, so the effort is wasted. Like most writers, if I'm going to cover something I prefer to be first with it or at least with everyone else. Send me e-mail press releases; the same should go for any online journalist.

Also, I would encourage anyone sending e-mail press releases to include an opt-out option. If a firm is sending me releases that are outside the area I cover, I want a way to turn off the flow.

Steve Outing, Owner: Online-News, Online-Writing and Online-Newspapers Lists Editor-in-Chief, Planetary News Planetary News is a Boulder, Colorado-based online publishing research and consulting firm specializing in the interactive news media industry.

(The comments below have been excerpted from the Online-Writing Discussion List owned by Steve Outing 05/13/98)

Diane Rowett Castro wrote:

"As a public relations specialist for over 9 years, I have found that editors sometimes get irritated when they receive "unsolicited" email news releases.

The best approach is to first contact the editor (either by telephone or email), tell them briefly in 1 to 2 sentences about the information in your news release and then ask if they are interested in receiving it.

Of course, this approach also depends on 1) your relationship with the editor, and 2) how they prefer to receive their news releases--each editor is different, and you need to be aware of this."

To which Daniel Dern replied:

"While the last point -- each editor is different -- is important to keep in mind, let me say IMNSHO as somebody who has also been a PR person but is mostly a journalist that email containing a readable ASCII version of a press release is the least annoying approach. Phone calls and/or email to 'meta' the notion are a waste of the journalist's time. By being journalists there's some implicit agreement that press releases are not 'unsolicited' per se.

OTOH (On The Other Hand), it's important to NOT keep sending stuff unless the receiver's agreed to be on the list. And not to add people to lists without their consent/request. (Saying "we're adding you, let us know if you want to be un-added" is the wrong way to go about this.)

Yes, when there's a personal relationship already there, or the editor's on a known beat, calls before the release may be not unreasonable.

That's my $.02. For more, a) See my PR essays on the subject, notably www.dern.com/prno_nos.html, b) Other excellent grumblings on the subject of editor/PR handshaking on the Internet Press Guild web site, Care & Feeding of the Press."

Daniel Dern
Internet writer, speaker, pundit & humorist