I had the pleasure of receiving a training day from The 101 on Monday.

The 101 is a group of journalists that give training to PRs.

My instructors for the day were Sally Whittle, Linda Jones and Neil Aitchison, all experienced national newspaper and broadcast practitioners.

The courses are informative and give the journalists’ take on how to get it right.  To have so much time to ask journalists in an informal and helpful environment about their outlook doesn’t come everyday, as Sally rightly pointed out.

But there was so much to take in.  This is where going over my notes and the slides and then some practice comes in.

Before I sign off 10 tips about what not to do with the nationals.  I am sure you will know some already, if not all, but they must still aggravate enough for the points to be reiterated:

No time wasting calls: pitch the story, not “did you get the release or when do you publish?”

Bad timing – If you are pitching a Christmas story it hardly worth doing it in mid-Dec, when stories are being written from September.

Do not over promise

Techno and jargon – leave it out

Making journalists look stupid – If you do not deliver on a tight deadline you will make the journalist look stupid in front of their editor and that could put their job in danger. Sally and Linda’s insight on the work culture of nationals was shocking.

No attachments or pictures – just the pitch in the body of an e-mail please

Not listening to free advice – Recognise journalist feedback and take note.

Taking to long to get back to us – If things are taking longer than usual keep the journalist updated

Tags: PR training

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 8th, 2008 at 8:05 pm and is filed under Education, PR. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.