Don’t Make Me Feel Like A Freelance C!

Back in my PR days, before the dreamy likes of Roxhill materialised, I would use an internal database to fine-tune my press releases’ mailing lists. Travel freelancers were graded for importance as either “Freelance A”, B, or C, with the latter category used exclusively when a client insisted on my sending out a release that I knew was ditchwater-dull.

I bring this up because it’s relevant to something which happens sporadically: I’ll read a story — about a new hotel, a new tour or whatever — on a website like Boutique Hotelier, The Times, Conde Nast Traveller — and then, a day or so later, get a press release telling me about the exact same thing as if the news is only now going out.

This is problematic chiefly because it risks my pitching the story, only to be told by a frustrated editor that it’s already out there, dimwit, and thus I look stupid and careless. That hopefully wouldn’t happen because ordinarily I’d check for existing coverage before pitching, but it remains a risk. And if it were to happen, I’d obviously not blame myself — I’m a man; things are never my fault! — so the offending PR would have to take the fall and a permanent Naughty Step re-assignation.

It’s also problematic by dint of feeling slightly insulting. I totally get it on a rational level: first you secure the precious exclusive, then you tell everyone else. Makes perfect sense. But it still stings subliminally. Am I in “Freelance B”, my insecure soul wonders? Or even… no… “Freelance C”?

Perhaps the thing to do is to own the coverage. That could just be an asterisk at the end of your release. *Please note that Boutique Hotel News had the exclusive on this story. I do get that this would risk creating an issue rather than solving one, though. Maybe you have a line like “Freelancers: if you plan to pitch this, we’d be delighted to confirm which titles have already committed to a story” — something along those lines, almost admitting pre-arranged coverage but not quite confessing to it.

Or maybe I just need to get over myself.