One thing I hated about being a corporate lawyer at Wilson Sonsini back in the day – we got to work on really cool deals (the last deal I worked on before leaving for a startup was the AOL/Netscape merger), but we were only brought in at the very end to paper everything. We fought over the fine print in the contracts after the meat of the deal was ironed out by CEOs. Skinning and dressing whatever the hunters bring back to the cave is fine for some people. But it’s not exactly being in the middle of the action.
PR firms today aren’t much different than corporate lawyers. They are paid to perform a service. They like to think of themselves as core to the strategic action of their clients. But more often, they’re just there to spin whatever happened in the most favorable light possible. Then they smile and dial and pray for coverage. Occasionally they are called in to smother a story, which is mildly more exciting, I imagine. But when a CEO is wondering what she should do next to drive her business forward, she generally doesn’t call her PR firm for advice. Or at least I hope she doesn’t.
PR firms are apparently just as frustrated by always being in the back seat as the law firms are.
I’m fascinated by Claire Cain Miller’s article in the New York Times today about PR in general and the birth of a startup, Wordnik, specifically.
Forget the tech blogs, said investor Roger McNamee. Brew PR head Brooke Hammerling instantly acquiesced, and decided to go with a sort of guerrilla approach instead by “whispering” into the ears of prominent Twitter users like Kevin Rose, Jay Adelson and Jason Calacanis. CNET was also given the story, but it managed to eek out only a single comment.
Ms. Hammerling, while popping green apple Jolly Ranchers into her mouth, suggests a press tour that includes briefing bloggers at influential geek sites like TechCrunch, All Things Digital and GigaOM.
But Roger McNamee, a prominent tech investor who is backing Wordnik, is also in the room, and a look of exasperation passes across his face at the mere mention of the sites.
“Why shouldn’t we avoid them? They’re cynical,” he says, also noting his concern that Wordnik would probably appeal more to wordsmiths than followers of tech blogs. “That’s where I would be most uncomfortable. They don’t know the difference between ‘they’re’ and ‘there.’ ”
Without missing a beat, Ms. Hammerling changes course, instantly agreeing with Mr. McNamee’s take. “I love you for that,” she intones. “I’ll leave the tech blogs out. Let them come to me.”
Instead, she decides that she will “whisper in the ears” of Silicon Valley’s Who’s Who — the entrepreneurs behind tech’s hottest start-ups, including Jay Adelson, the chief executive of Digg; Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter; and Jason Calacanis, the founder of Mahalo.
The result? Not much. Wordnik is flatlining at an abysmal amount of traffic. Comscore and Quantcast don’t even register the site as a blip.
Compare Wordnik to Topsy, another recently launch service. Topsy launched on TechCrunch exclusively. The domain now has 577,000 results on Google, compared to 56,000 for Wordnik. And the traffic difference is stunning:
I’d say this experiment in a pure social media launch failed.
The article goes on for pages describing Hammerling’s incredible networking skills and propensity to namedrop at every opportunity.
Ms. Hammerling’s connections have been crucial for Brew in finding and serving clients, says Ms. Cook, her business partner: “Without question, that allows us to play at a different level, because we’re not just doing P.R. and media relations; we’re connecting people at the highest level, helping deals get done.”
I know Brooke well. I guess you could say I’m one of her many thousands of “very close friends.” And I don’t dispute that she is well connected, or that those connections help her get clients.
I believe Brooke’s client have been better served if she stood up to McNamee and told him that Wordnik would have had a better launch if they hadn’t ignored the blogs that are interested in covering new startups. Instead she became a “yes woman” and told McNamee exactly what he wanted to hear.
Hammerling and her peers in the industry should help guide their clients through the minefield of journalists and bloggers, rather than simply avoid it entirely out of fear or ignorance. She isn’t in the room to drop names or “help get deals done.” She’s there to make sure the client’s news gets spread appropriately. In that they failed miserably, and the client suffered.
As cool as Kevin Rose is (and he did apparently Twitter that Wordnik was “truly amazing”), this is not a launch strategy.
PR is the key to sucess on the internet :-)
i like it when mikey posts about his experience as a lawyer and how it relates to the start-ups. thx.
I’m sure Micheal enjoys being called Mikey as much as you enjoy his posts.
I’m sure they will talk to TC later if they are smart, get all the bugs out first. Sometimes a stealth launch is better to work out the bugs.
“PR is the key to sucess on the internet” … 墨尔本 – July 4th, 2009 at 5:40 pm PDT
That is a fallacy. More Intelligent Content/Novel Imaginative Source leads and therefore rules for success on the Internet.
And Sharing IT freely soon has PR Interests looking to make a Fortune from ITs Syndication/Distribution …… but that is as a second bite at an old juicy apple from a fertile tree in a whole orchard of fertile trees laden with juicy virgin fruits.
What software you use to generate your comments? It is very good one.
I’m not sure if you realize this, but Mike has just proven the value of PR. I’m sure his PR agent did get him the story in the NY times.
So by bypassing the techcrunches of the world, she got a story in the NY times, AND got TechCrunch to do a story about it, because they were called out.
Awesome. In effect the tech blogs did come around to them.
Great strategy, likely it won’t work again.
I was thinking the same thing. A really interesting strategy, for sure.
Mike, you might like my post about this topic. I think Roger is wrong and not because his advice was wrong, but because his reasoning behind his advice was wrong. Anyway, here’s my advice to tech execs who want to reach “normal” users: http://scobleiz...chgigaom-et-al/
What’s that old saying? Any news is newsworthy?? Or anytime you get free PR in the NY Times or via a blog…it’s all good. Still, blogs are the future…so those people missed the boat.
In response to Julianne – I hope you’re being ironic, but I’m not sure. Can you please clarify because if you’re not, there are a few important points that need to be made opposing “that old saying” you refer to: “any news is newsworthy.” (Btw, I think you mean “any press is good press.”) Looking forward to your response…
How can you PR forms ignore blogs in this day and age?
Yeah, that’s really ignorant of them.
What other blogs besides for techcrunch are platforms to launch a website like Topsy on?
Er, am I the only one who thinks that getting that article into the NY Times beats any number of TechCrunch mentions?
Especially when you consider that the end users of Wordnik - people who like words and know how to use them- are more likely to be readers of NY Times than they are of TechCrunch? (I know, I know, that I too read TC rather than the NYT.)
I am sorry, but launching a tech company startup and avoiding blogs like techcrunch is absolutely insane.
Roger McNamee doesn’t know about Tech blog’s for sure, is the only i gonna say. Blog tech Is like a baby with milk … we need it (Tech Blog’s) every day.
John
SAP MM consultant
—————
http://www.encu...ntry/JobUsa.htm
Online job seeker
The fact that Wordnik sucks unshaven gorilla balls doesn’t help with the traffic stats either.
PR and all that jazz can help, but if your product is as useful as my after workout ball sweat don’t expect much traffic.
Build great products, promote them a bit, and the users will come if the value is present.
Exactly! Well spoken.
I’m still stuck on trying to figure out who would actually shave a gorilla’s balls to provide a comparison for sucking unshaven gorilla balls.
Trust me, unshaven gorilla balls are much worse (I have a lot of free time since I usually can’t find a date).
“Why shouldn’t we avoid them? They’re cynical,” he says, also noting his concern that Wordnik would probably appeal more to wordsmiths than followers of tech blogs. “That’s where I would be most uncomfortable. They don’t know the difference between ‘they’re’ and ‘there.’ ”
you make it sound like techcrunch buzz would net them staying power traffic wise. Its just a shitty product that noone really cares about
maybe. but we’ll never know. and i actually like the product, although it seems like it would be better as a pet non profit type thing.
I’m going to go and whisper sweet business plans into a VC’s ear now…
:)
PR will be the next industry to fall after newspapers as social media become more prevelent in helping firms and celebrities control their public perceptions.
Look at how celebrities are quick to jump on Twitter to clarify misunderstandings or dispell rumors themselves without a PR firm (I don’t doubt that many celebrity accounts are controled by firms and agents but I still think there will be a paradigm shift in that regard) same with companies.
disagree. we need PR more than ever. they are struggling through a transition period right now, and I’m doing my best to guide them.
Nice CrunchPad bit in the NYT. Maybe CrunchPR is the next step here. ;)
Sweet. By the way , is there a PR firm out there that understands you? It’s really tough getting through to you :)
Mike,
Haven’t read all of the comments yet, but wanted to say I appreciated this one and your article. THIS isn’t PR, or at least the way it should be. This is antiquated PR and I can’t believe it got coverage like this in the NYT. I can’t even bring myself to read the entire story. You give PR a hard time, but not undeservedly. It’s unfortunate that this article reinforces every bad PR stereotype that is out there.
–Lisa (pprlisa from PerkettPR)
Absolutely celebrities/luminaries have PR pros managing their Twitter feeds, FB pages, and even blogs. At least the smarter ones do.
I for one can attest to the power of Tech Crunch, and our launch was not covered here or anywhere else. I announced our soft-launch in the comments section of 3 or 4 TechCrunch posts on January 15th and 16th of 2009…a few other spots but mostly just here.
In June (just 4 months later) I had over 900,000 page views and had 565.000 unique visitors…
You can see our traffic details in the link below for the first ten days of June if you doubt me, and (I would be happy to provide our google analytics numbers to dis-believeing parties by email):
http://dailybai...s-the-show.html
So either I am a hell of a bailout writer or those posts I made in these comments sections made The Daily Bail famous…
You decide.
Yes, TC can get you a lot of traffic, but it won’t get you money.
Traffic in today’s day and age is not worth much. They went over this at the social media business session at Google IO, and they were right.
You WILL get traffic from TechCrunch, you WILL NOT get conversions.
The kind of traffic you get conversions from HAS to be contextual, and that is disappearing with ad block plus ect…
Microsoft is forcing people to shut ABP off in order to get cashback, so they are sort of attacking the problem. I actually bent over and turned ABP off to buy an ebay item with buy it now to get the dumb 8% cashback.
But I turned it on right after.
At any rate, people that have tracked TC traffic in analytics will know what I mean.
I agree with your comments and I have not even begun to try monetizing my traffic yet. I wanted to build my audience first.
We were recently invited to be an isocket Beta client so I’ll see how that goes with advertising.
Tech Crunch is also doing some ad selling with isocket, fwiw. John Ramey, their CEO, is a future Ad superstar.
If I was a PR person, I would do something genius like buy ads at bus stations and billboards with QR codes only, with some type of subtitle like “scan and win”
You would get SO MUCH freaking traffic and conversions. It would drive people crazy, they would ask their coworkers to do it for them if they had some kind of lame cell phone.
But then again I am kind of genius and normal PR people are just lame.
That’s a really good idea, actually.
Thanks, I stole, erm, based it on Google’s idea. They remain a tad bit smarter than I am. But I’m still worlds smarter than any PR firm’s combined staff. Google is just exponentially smarter.
Chris, for such a genius, it’s ironic you don’t understand the difference between paid advertising and PR.
Is adblockplus [ABP] affecting Google adword or other PPc ads?
To clarify the numbers from my previous post:
We did 900,000 page views and 565,000 uniques in June ALONE.
Your traffic is impressive but looking at your site, I can’t say the same for revenue or long-term prospects. Do you think three years from now, people will be fixated by daily bailout updates?
No…but the site is equally focused on debt and deficit issues, and those will likely stay with us for the rest of my natural life.
I wanted to add some more detail to my answer as I get your question all the time. We have morphed quickly into the only site with daily (almost daily) updates of financial and political comedy.
Nutshelled, we cover the Federal Reserve, political capture, Wall Street and Washington corruption, financial comedy, CNBC, the national debt and deficit issues, and the bailouts.
I think we will safely have enough to cover as long as I am interested in continuing…
565,000 uniques in June (just our 5th month of existence) with almost ZERO publicity tells a pretty decent story I think.
Here are 2 recent posts to give you an idea of our content outside of the bailouts:
Why Dylan Ratigan Left CNBC: The Audio Leakage (hilarious 45 second rant from Ratigan)
http://dailybai...io-leakage.html
And Peter Schiff: ‘Of Course We’re Not Going To Pay Back The Chinese.’
http://dailybai...the-chines.html
People have found us and keep coming back AND sharing our stories. And I run the site entirely alone…no interns, no guest writers, nada. Just me and my own personal brand of financial pain.
So you can make it without PR, it just takes 5 moths of 18 hour days, relentless focus on providing good content, and an intense desire to succeed.
Thanks for your question.
Dear Author of Daily Bail… can I ask you some traffic related questions via email, cos I am curious? My id is
i(at)hack.mp …
Yes. You can contact me through the ‘contact’ button on our site. Your message will go straight to my email.
Using PR firms for any kind of launch is a waste of money. In fact the whole concept of a bang-launch is a misnomer.
Steady progress: Drip, Drip, Drip wins the game.
yep.
AdWhirl has had a similar experience. We were in private beta for a few weeks before launching exclusively on Techcrunch in April, and interest exploded immediately afterwards. We would most certainly not be where we are now if it were not for the initial launch coverage, and especially since we did not have the financial resources to hire a PR firm at the time of our launch.
I agree Michael, but I want to point out: One of the benefit for PR folks to talk to TechCrunch and the others is not so much to appear on your blog, as nice as it is, but to appear and be discussed on all of the smaller blogs that feed off of TC’s content (as an example.)
There’s a lot to be said about the folks blogging off of TechCrunch and the benefit they bring to these startups in their PR coverage.
Hey dude can I like adjust my RSS feed to filter out self-serving bullshit like this. I mean. Really. Who cares?
How long you been on the web?
PR is a good thing. It can be had for cheap and executed by anyone whether you’re a two person startup or 2000 person company with a corporate com department. It’s just a) the lack of involvement that companies give to PR ie- heres what weve built, try to spin it b) this hope of just tweet this bitch out and give out 10 free macbook pros.
Launching on techcrunch is a great thing. I’ve never experienced it, but it works and gets visitors according to industry friends. The problem is, many startups think it’s the ONLY thing they need to do. “What happens after the techcrunch launch?” is a question more companies need to ask. Otherwise, your next TechCrunch appearance will be a deadpool article.
I agree, it is hard to successfully launch a tech startup without first promoting it at techcrunch.
However, there is LaunchWire.Net for the little people to announce their new launches.
Sarah
“AOL/Netscape” merger.
I can’t think of a single reason that happened.
Was it insider cahoots, Arlington?
Well said. It’s not even a ’soft launch’ strategy.
Roger McNamee… he’s the VC fool who poured 1/4-1/3 of their money into Palm. LOL… and he claimed that people will be switching from iPhone to Pre. And he was so silly that Palm had to issue a statement and distance themselves from him.
And now he shows us again how foolish he is. LOL
It’s not appropriate to assume all PR people have the same skill level or go to the same lengths to develop smart, engaging communications strategies. In this day and age, very few PR people “smile and dial.” It’s more frequently about engaging and connecting with a company’s target audience in a meaningful way. As a PR person, I only ask that people remember there are good and bad practitioners as there are in any profession. I’m fortunate enough to say I am surrounded by smart, innovative PR people who would go to the ends of the planet to ensure the success of their PR programs.
ALEXA ，Accurate flow measurement it？？
I work a lot with PR firms. They usually don’t know the net, often present false web exposure numbers, but tell their customers how net savvy they are.
The fashion industry for example uses PR firms as their actual marketing advisers as they often don’t have such capacity inside the brand.
Once at a fashion event I heard a PR firm executive telling an online video network that the brand’s designer are not giving interviews to the net, only to TV to shows like David Letterman, the brand sells high priced fashion to twelve years old girls. I wonder how many of these girls watch David Letterman and how many spend most of its time online.
If PR firms want to keep their business going, they need to welcome the web for all its forms.
I finally finished the whole NYTimes article and I have to say that Ms. Hammerling comes of as a vapid and a sad person. She has no life and her persona seems to be the PR image that she created.
Completely depressing how low some people go to appear important. I truly feel sorry for her.
mike, awesome article. this is exactly the type of insider analysis that has made TC great.
Shameless self promotion. How’s that for PR?
Mr. Arrington forgot to mention that Topsy had 15mil, I’m not sure this word…whatever had anything comparable. Also, comparing a startup in a hot space that is really interesting for just about everybody (to try) with a pretty much niche SITE that won’t necessarily become a business at all… is like comparing the proverbial apples and oranges.
Not funny. Dull anthem to the self.
well, she did manage to get a TC coverage, didn’t she?
PR stands for Public RELATIONS – maybe more PR-consultants should think about that :)
For a site about the English language, the NYT is a much better choice than Techcrunch. The NYT has crossword puzzles, William Safire’s column on language, etc. so it is perfect for the audience. I agree with Alex above that a Twitter search engine is a completely different type of product that is much more suited to tech blogs.
Plus NYT has a 15 million+ per month readership
Yes, and I’m sure they all made it to page 12F to read article X. Signal to noise and attention are often ignored when just looking at circulation numbers.
I love that Wordnik says ‘linux’ was used alot in the 50’s…
Yet they still made it on to TC after all.. which is something most startups don’t ever manage! I suppose we’ll have to wait until next months stats are in to see if it had any significant effect.
I’m sorry but Mike, by covering Wordnik here (which is a fantastic service, btw), you’ve demonstrated that bad PR works too.
im very frustrated to have some PR in my sites
Very disappointed. This used to be the type of post by Mike (self-serving, aggrandizing) that would cause commenters to go off. Come on people, don’t go soft now!
Funny, the ‘back seat driving position’ of being a professional service provider is what made me doing a startup.
It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.
usefull info
Hahah..yeah I read that article too and was wondering when you’d react.
What you say is true, though- it’s undeniable that (as much as I feel like pulling your hair out at times) presented with a choice, I’d choose being featured on Techcrunch any day, over Kevin Rose’s Twitter account, all due respect.
For example, we’ve benefited tremendously from a simple elevator pitch feature on TC, and leaving aside the sudden spurt in traffic we had around the time of the feature, we still get, until yesterday, visitors heading to our site from TC.
Put simply, we can argue to death about whether TC has a bigger head than Kevin Rose, but it is undeniable that TC has a waaaaaaaaaaaaay longer tail than almost anyone else out there. And it’s the long tail most of us are after anyway.
More importantly, I don’t see why it should be a Kevin Rose vs. Techcrunch argument to begin with- sounds to me like they ought to have been complementary efforts in the first place.
““Why shouldn’t we avoid them? They’re cynical,”- that surprised me too. Who gives a shit if they’re cynical? It’s pretty obvious that the cynicism(or bias) of an author penning an article on TC has little to no relevance to how the product/service is ultimately perceived by its customers/users.
All in all, I have to agree with you, Michael, that this was a really lousy article…kinda misleading, in fact.
this calls for a t-shirt
Michael, I have been praying that you will cover my startup – http://www.gambolio.com – for ages. When are you going to answer my prayers? ;)
The problem is that most PR firms say they are doing public relations but actually all they are doing is PRESS RELEASES
Then you have had the wrong PR advisor– because the practice of strategic business communications is far more thoughtful and multifaceted, correctly assigned to a C-level officer, and a critical enterprise commitment not only to reach intended customers, but also to listen to them. Trustful dialog is a two-way street, and the web makes this both immediate but fractured at the same time. You can learn more at: http://www.prsa.org
Best PR for a language is arranging a civil war where its widely spoken
The challenge for PR is that there is a small group of PRs who take PR to mean Personal Relations, not Public Relations, and these are the guys who will be engaged with social media and actually building worthwhile relationships based on content and interests rather than just firing out press releases.
It’s the job of this small (but expanding) group to try and help the PRs who are still playing by the old rules to make Mr.Arrington et al’s lives easier and more interesting.
Sometimes as a PR you will work with a client who is offering a truly awful product that you fear no-one will touch with a big stick – however it is your job to try and get them some exposure, and the best way to do that is to be honest with you and the blogger/journalist you’re approaching and say, well what are the benefits of this product, how can we best work together to be as fair as possible to ourselves and the client.
To clients whose ROI is measured in marks out of five, a well built relationship can be the difference between a 2/5 and a 3/5, but this can only be achieved if the PR takes the time to get to know the writer they are speaking with.
How can you do that if you’re merely sending out a Press Release to a large list of people? You can’t, hence Personal Relations, not Public Relations.
I’d like to be friends with Brooke Hammerling.
Great post. Sadly, we — as an industry — continue to demonstrate that we’ve a long way to go.
“Great post. Sadly, we — as an industry — continue to demonstrate that we’ve a long way to go.”
Thats it Rick, that sums it up perfectly
I had my fill of mergers at Wilson, Sonsini myself and totally agree that although it was great to work with start-ups, it’s better to be working inside where the deals are formulated and the strategy set, rather than outside where you’re just papering what has already been decided.
I’m interested in your assertion that this launch was a failure but not sure you’ve fully made your point. The news of this launch reached more than 1 mil people the 1st day. Doesn’t that qualify as success? Maybe the product is the problem….at what point do you stop blaming the publicist? And if you still think it’s the publicity, does this mean that reaching 1 mil over social media isn’t good enough? They got 40k hits as a result. Thanks.
40k hits off reaching 1mil is horrible.
Agreed w/your comments Michael, but ironically & with all due respect – would you have covered this story had you not known Brooke?
Despite my company’s best efforts (for better or for worse) we have not been able to get a single tech blogger to cover us, & I can’t help but wonder if it is b/c we’re not “connected”.
How does one get covered by their favorite tech blog?
you build a compelling product.
We’ve built one of the largest (if not the largest) wikis in the world w/over 13 million pages, organized to serve over 22K U.S. communities, which includes a moderated classified ad marketplace, a directory play on the $26 billion yellow page industry, and a hyper-local on-line newspaper for thousands of communities have historically been too small to support the legacy costs inherent to a newspaper. Granted, we’re new, but I feel like we have some compelling attributes.
For what its worth fellow TechCrunchers, here’s my summary of our press release results:
Postmortem Press Release Results
In an effort to promote the official launch of WikiCity, we decided to spend $680 that we really didn’t have to publish a “US1” press release (the granddaddy of them all – PRNewswire’s most expansive U.S. distribution offering) entitled “WikiCity Launches a Hyper-Local City Wiki for Every City”. Simply put, we decided to invest in a press release because we wanted more traffic. As part of the decision process, we considered a number of factors, researched best practices, and did everything we could to determine what kind or results to expect. Despite our best efforts and growing frustration, none of the dozens of experts or reputable press release agencies we met would dare guestimate what kind of results we might experience. And therefore, it is this same frustration that has motivated me to share our press release results here with you so that if you are considering investing in a press release, you can draw upon our experiences so that you won’t have to make the decision in the dark. I’ve recapped our results below, but in summary, traffic results did not meet expectations, and the key learning was – as with many things in life – size doesn’t matter; it’s how you use it that counts.
Traffic Results
Not much incremental traffic, but lots of much-needed links. Unfortunately, not a single phone call or even an email inquiry from a journalist. Pathetic.
• Incremental # of unique visitors on day of release: 150
• Incremental # of unique visitors on day after release: 50
• # of links / web publications: 180
• # of phone calls from journalists: 0
• # of email inquiries from journalists: 0
Key Learnings
A variety of lessons, ranked in order of importance:
• Size doesn’t matter; it’s how you use it that counts. Even if your initial results sucked as bad as ours, recognize that a press release is a single action. It’s what you do around them that matters. Contact targeted journalists both in advance and after your press release is published, asking them if they will help share your story. Use the release as an excuse to tell everyone you know… Link the release to your blog, website, Facebook fan page, LinkedIn profile, etc.
• Credibility: Press releases, especially when distributed through reputable agencies, can get your release published on reputable sites such as Forbes or Yahoo Finance, which search engines seem to appreciate. Beyond that, these links have already helped to lend us credibility with our partners and users, while at the same time, making it much easier to share our story with selected journalists.
• Links from web publications: You get lots of them. (Quick math: $3.78/link)
• Time your distribution wisely: Avoid distributing on Mondays, Fridays, when the stock market opens/closes, or when pop icons die.
• Choose distribution wisely: We chose PRNewswire’s “US1” distribution because it was the only way we could reach small-town newspapers within the thousands of small communities we serve. However, based on the lack of inquiries from journalists, we will need to instead find other means to reach this audience. If we were to do it all over again, we would probably select an on-line only distribution.
• Choose your press release agency wisely: Sure, each agency has a little something different to offer, but for the most part, as long as you’re distributing through the Associated Press, press release distribution is a commodity. Note: There are a lot of “free” press release services out there, and I’ll be the first to admit that they too can be used effectively to help boost credibility, but you likely won’t reach the more reputable news agencies because the freebies are generally considered “spammy”, and therefore, you won’t enjoy nearly as many back-links. Stick with PRNewswire, PRWeb, Marketwire, or Warren Buffett’s Business Wire and you should fare well. Hope this helps, and best of luck!
God what a horror show. You can’t just pay some hack to write a generic press release and spam it out to the masses. As a former journalist I find the sound of your product intriguing…it’s really sad that communities are losing their daily papers and when they’re gone, they’re gone forever. This is of course a massive topic in the journalism world. You should start by calling up Columbia Journalism review and a couple of other publications that cover the media. Or maybe try the NYT or Wash Post media writers. Don’t hire some stupid flak to talk to them. You know your product best, you can convey the most enthusiasm, you will never have to say, ‘uh, let me get back to you on that one.” signed, current flak
Unfortunately we learned the hard way, but you’re right. ‘Much appreciated advice! Gracias, Pat