Legendary tech journalist David Strom this week filed a two-part series for SWMS on well-known tech journalists who have migrated either to publish for vendors or for industry analyst firms. Why did they do it? Are they happy? The content is subscriber-only. But here on the Sampler we offer David's analysis on what this migration means for tech PR pros.
Says David:
Well, for one thing, it is going to be harder to keep track of where to pitch stories, and also harder to get these pitches across the transom. You should first hone your skills at tracking the blogging community: use a blog search tool, start posting comments on the more influential ones, and go meet them at the conferences that the bloggers who are working in your market niche attend. In China Martens' case, she has had to find a whole new set of AR contacts: "the analyst relations and public relations folks at the companies I cover are completely different, so it feels almost like I am starting over, establishing fresh relationships with companies that I've tracked for many years."
Second, it is too late now, but the most successful PR types are those that have developed good personal relationships with these editors before they depart CMP, Ziff et al. If you want to pitch the vendor-sponsored editors, make sure you fit into their niche and have something that can complement the overall message and product line that they represent. This means understanding your client's overall partner, channel, and distribution ecosystem and being able to find how your client's news nugget can apply to these third-party players.
For example, a new SharePoint add-in product can be pitched to people writing about collaboration (such as someone like Chris Miller who writes IdoNotes.com), to Microsoft-centric bloggers, and to major ISVs too. You need to cast a wide net, and spend some time tracking this stuff down. Which means now more than ever you need to understand the overall context for that news nugget, too.
Third, if you don't know how to use RSS feeds to keep up to date on what these folks are doing, now is the time to learn. We have put links to the RSS feeds of the journalists that we mentioned on purpose (rather than provide links to ordinary Web URLs), and if you haven't tried an RSS reader, I recommend starting with Bloglines or Google's Reader. To make things easier, you can check out the consolidated links on my Pageflakes page and see what you might find appealing.
David Strom has been a technology journalist for more than 20 years – starting his career when he first met Sam at PC Week in the mid-1980s. He has been the founding editor-in-chief of Network Computing magazine and ran editorial operations for Tom's Hardware and numerous other Web sites. He speaks, podcasts, blogs, and freelances for numerous IT publications and the New York Times. His "Web Informant" blog was one of the first such email newsletters. In his spare time, he does the Tech PR War Stories series of podcasts with Paul Gillin.
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