Tomorrow's Business Today
Circling back to the top of the inbox
A zinger from Naomi Rovnick, the markets correspondent for Thomson Reuters.
She tweets: I got an email from a woman who sells media databases asking to “update my details”. I said please remove me from all the databases, I don’t want press releases. She has not responded. Should I circle back and bump my request to the top of her inbox?
Hey, she’s making fun of you! Well, some of you.
Plenty of journalists do want press releases, but none would say we don’t get enough.
In Rovnick’s case, I guess that insightful views on what is happening in markets, the clever thing she may have missed, are entirely welcome.
It’s the rest of it she can’t stand; it is just in the way.
In hackland, we find the desire to spaff press releases to all and sundry baffling.
Surely better to hit ten guys you know for sure have an interest, than 500 who couldn’t care less.
Often, it is clear the flak has no idea where their work is going. They are relying on a duff database or are drawing the wrong conclusion from the data.
Just now, the Royal Aeronautical Society is chasing me. It wants to know if I have seen the proposals from its Governance Review Steering Group.
Aeronautical. That’s planes, right? I guess I’ve written about planes from time to time.
Sometimes a flak will ask me, how do we get the attention of so-and-so?
Without fail, they will name the sort of hack whose attention you do not want.
If they are paying attention to something, that probably means someone is going to end up in prison.
From the outside, it feels like the time spent chasing up hacks who pointedly don’t want to talk to you, would be better spent using a good database to find the hacks who really might be interested.
When it comes to that, well, not all databases are equal…
Press release of the day
Stories that will keep rolling
1) Can the government afford to increase public sector pay or not?
2) Does Hollywood Bowl have strong Xmas bookings?
3) What do the retail sales figures suggest about an impending recession?
4) Is the Royal Mail strike boosting the high street?
